oKK, so my wd 500gb external harddrive worked fine.. I have a lot of important files up there, a lot of them.. Everytime I logged on to it '(Local Disk [f])MY BOOK..'.. Now every time I try it.. To laptop and to the PC it goes just "Local Disk (F:)" and when I go inside it's empty, like the data is gone all of the sudden.. When I click properties it says capacity of disk 10MB.. I tried CHKDSK /f /r and etc.. But nothing worked.. Please if anyone can help, damn... I have a lot of files there that I need to get back :L P.S. I ran to disk managment and it recognised drive F with 500 gb capacity, but when I tried explore.. it was empty again and than properties still 10mb capacity :L I'd appreciate for any help

That is why you should make backups. Is the external a USB or some other connection type?

I'm not sure I understand.. It's connected to usb with DATA CABLE.. So yea, it's usb.. Btw.. how do u mean I should've make a back-up? The backup was on my external.. U see I copied all the files from PC to external harddrive thinkin' it was safe, now it's screwed up.. all of it.. I mean I changed the drive letter, I go inside the 'Local drive W' and it says capacity 10.1MB.. But when I see it from Disk Managment there's this (DISK 1: 465.76GB FAT)... I just had some damn important files, and it seems they cannot be recovered.. I used Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional, went to Advanced recovery and waited for 5 h.. Now I see there R recovered Recycled-inside of it two files(info32, desktop.ini) and System Volume Information-an empty folder _restore(3C17C2EB-25FA-48FE-A60E-3DDE36010F0F) and the other folder _P54 that contains two files (change.log.1, and _HANGE.LOG).. I wont recover these files coz I know there wont be any difference.. I'm just curious, is it everything erased, my hard drive wont work anymore or something else.. Wish there was a solution...

Backups mean you have TWO copies. Do you still have those files on an internal drive? External drives also come with firewire connection and eSATA connection. Makes a difference in how you may treat the problem. Download a drive fitness test from the drive manufacturer and run it to determine if the drive is good or defective. Your situation is unusual. It is possible the drive itself may be OK but the drive controller circuits in the Enclosure are messed up. Is the unit still under warranty? I ask because opening the enclosure will void any warranty. When viewing Disk Management expand the screen to full. Is there any other information listed that you didn't see before? What I am wondering is the format that says FAT. There is nothing after the FAT?

When I tried defragment on this drive, it said something like it cannot defragment fat16.. I mean damn.. I'm sure It wasn't fat16 before, I think it was fat32 and maybe it still is.. I had an utility that said "Drive status:FAIL".. but I can go inside of it.. I don't understand, Free Space 10.0 MB, capacity 10.1MB.. About the warranty, no worries.. If u have any idea what to do if I need to open it sh00t, coz I bought it on another state so no warranty... I did a chkdsk /f /r.. it completed like in few seconds and said it was oKK.. I'm open to any ideas, solutions, coz somehow need to get some data back. P.S. No, I don't have the data on internal drive coz I needed to format the PC so like a backup I used the external harddrive so after format I can add them up.. somethin' went wrong I guess... later had a problem on pc $MFT is corrupt and unreadable.. and fixed it with a format, but I'm not sure if that caused the problem, to the external hard drive.. :L :F

Did you have the external connected when you formatted the internal drive?

I don't think the drive got changed from FAT32 to FAT16 by itself. That said, there is a utility that Might help you. It is called Testdisk. You need to read the help files carefully BEFORE attempting to use it. Also, I would try using a live version of Linux, like Knoppix, to see if you can recover any files BEFORE tying to fix with testdisk. Download links below. Get the English version at the first link. http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05299 http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Test...