I have had photos from my digital camera on a slave HD. Have viewed them before. Now when I click on the D drive it says I have to format. Any Ideas? Thanks donscomp

Did it happen out of the blue or did you make a hardware/software change just before it happened?

I second Sean, we do need more info. Meanwhile, it's possible you may find the answer (or answers) from this article: 200 ways to revive a hard drive It's 14-pages long discussion full of ideas and worth reading. i_XpUser

Well, to tell you the truth, it is on a buddys computer. I formated and installed Xp on it for him. Had all AV and firewalls on it and was able to access the drive. This drive was there when running 98 on it. The 2nd one I mean. And as I said it was readable since installing Xp. I asked him if he knows of anything being installed on it since he was able to look at it last. He said that he has used that drive maybe 5 times and of corse there are kids and the wife doing things with the computer all the time. Older kids but sometimes they can be more trouble. LOL In the disk management it is there. But shows 8 gigs capacity and 8 gigs free. I just PC anywhered to it and it just wants to format it. Thanks for the help guys. He asked. A loose cable? I said I dout it as it sees it. I asked. Have you heard any knocking? He said he doesnt know. LOL Geeeez. donscomp