I have an external drive I use for media files. The computer detects it but says it's an unknown device and can't find a driver for it. I'm thinking the FAT was damaged because it wasn't ejected properly from a Western Digital TV box. Years ago, I had similar problems with dying drives. If memory is correct, I used TestDisk to repair the FAT. I tried this last night and Manage Drives (under My Computer) shows a partition for what I think is the free space on the drive (63MB; The drive is 1TB). There is still no entry in My Computer though. Please help me recover my data from this drive.

Hi, As you have a 1TB drive, the file system will not be FAT, as FAT doesn't handle drives of this size. It is more likely that the drive used the NTFS filesystem. Any attempt to repair the drive using a FAT option will fail. So you may have more luck with TestDisk if you approach it with a view to repairing an NTFS filesystem. Regards

fat32 handles up to 2 terabyte drives http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm 32gig fat32 is a MS decided limit. Question is what was used to setup the drive?

Hi Wanderer, Technically you are correct. FAT32 can address a 1 terrabyte address space but Terrabyte drives in a Windows environment are very unlikely to be to formatted using a FAT file system. It really doesn't matter that Windows imposed an artificial limit, what matters here is that the drive in question is unlikely to be formatted with a FAT file system. I said, ... you may have more luck with TestDisk if you approach it with a view to repairing an NTFS filesystem., and I still think that this is appropriate. Maybe I have missed something - but are Terrabyte hard drives more likely to be formatted with a FAT file system than an NTFS file system in someone using Windows. I note that the poster said Years ago, I had similar problems with dying drives. If memory is correct, I used TestDisk to repair the FAT., and I wanted to suggest that a repair based on FAT was unlikely to be successful. I may of course be wrong. Regards

Many of these devices use Linux or a variant and is most likely not using a FAT or NTFS file system.

wizard-fred is absolutely correct as far as THIS article goes! Hint: FAT & NTFS file systems will cause NAS drive to stop functioning as NAS drive. i_Xp/Vista/W7User

For whatever reason, the drive is now working. I had already powered down both the drive and the computer several times. Last night, I unplugged the power and USB cables from the drive and reattached them. All is fine now. I know loose cables can cause issues. I wouldn't have expected that particular problem though. lol In my case, it's currently FAT32. However, it may be that I formatted it at some point. Thanks for the information though. :)