hi, ive got an extarnal 160gb NTFS hard disk drive, im also running windows xp pro. When i plugged in my external drive, it came up with it has no format and needs reformatting, although it is formatted to NTFS. There is very important info on this drive and i wasn't clever enough to make a backup of it! so, how are you able to get the information of the drive, or format the drive WITHOUT the anything being whiped, even better is there any way to make a backup of the data on it. It will be a great help if anyone can help. Thanks

What type of hard disk? How are you pugging it in? What told you the drive wasn't formatted? Does Disk Management see a 'healthy' drive? Why didn't you backup your data? J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m

Assuming it's connected via USB, try a different port or cable. You can also try a different computer just make sure it's not your machine. Try taking the drive out and connecting it in your machine directly. Once and if you do get it mounted, run a chkdsk /r on it.

hi, i have tried to plug it into a different computer, via USB, i also plugged it in directly into the computer. And it is a memory hard disk the same type that is already in the computer and is a plugged in by pin and transformed into USB for external use. it is not SATA if that helps. And what told me the drive wasn't formatted was when i plugged it in it never came up with the little box in the top left hand corner checking what was on it, nore how i wanted to open it. and so with that i went into my computer and tried to go in and a window came up saying 'this drive is not formatted, would you like to format it now' and then i went ono disk manager and had a look and it says that the device is working properly. and i never backed it up mainly because of the reason that there is 75gb worth of data on it and i never had another drive to handle that much even with compression.

You are using XP SP2? If so as soon as you plug the drive in it should be recognized. I would put the drive back whereever you orginally stuck the data on from and ensure the data is actually still there. If it is not, I'd attempt to run a recovery on the disk to see if it can restore your old filesystem/MBR (assuming it's been lost/wiped). If the data is there, then check the drive out fully, make sure there are no problems with the disk. Then try it as an external again. Also make sure your external case isn't a NAT box or something that will attempt to write filesystems directly to it (okokok i'm REALLY reaching here...:) J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m

thanks for the advice, i found out that it is the table on the drive that is causeing these problems, and yes data is on there, i have tried to get data of it using a few different data recovery programs. Do you know one that will actualy get all the data back, or at least more than a little. or know anythig else that could do anything similair, and sorry, what did you mean by (okokok i'm REALLY reaching here...:)?!

Hehe, reaching a bit, but thats ok!! When it comes to recovery ask for the moon, but be happy if you just get a pebble. I use RestorerPro2000Net very happily. Great recovery/undeleter, understands many filesystems. Once I installed a linux distro over a working XP box and had to restore it. Lost some stuff but overall good experience. (last time I use a autobooting installer on a important PC :) Remember that, recovery only works if the disk has not been modified since the time of loss. This maximizes your chances of full recovery. Even rebooting the system will affect the amount of recovery you can get. All you can do is scan, see what shows up and decide if any of it is worth backing up. Many professional services will do the scan for free, and only charge for recovery of data. Still expensive, but that depends on what your data is worth? J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m