I have a 80GB Western Digital HD (WD800) that came with a Gateway computer, which I purchased in Sept. of 2001 with Windows XP Professional (SP1) on it. Recently the computer suffered a catastrophic crash and would not restart even after attempts of repairing some system files. Now, I had this coming, running XP without service pack 2, so I’m not looking for pity. Also putting me in the moron category is the fact that I have lots of extremely valuable files on this HD that, oops, I hadn’t yet backed up. So now I have seemingly successfully connected the hard drive to A laptop via a USB 2.0 connection by using an external enclosure. The laptop is running Win XP pro (SP2). The drive appears on my laptop, but when I try to access it, a pop-up appears asking if I want to format the drive, which I obviously do not. When I click “no” nothing happens. Does anyone know how I can get to the contents of the drive? Is there some sort of driver or recovery software that can help? Any help will be much appreciated! Thanks. -Erik

If you have access to a desktop computer, I would try installing it as a slave and see if the data can be recovered.

in the upper right hand corner of this page is an ad for a program called GET DATA BACK made by RUNTIME ... it is a great program and I personally use it alot (not on my system but VARIOUS other people's)Get the Demo and try it ... It work's !!! GET DATA BACK ! ps remember XP is NTFS

I use xp pro service pack two and it flys an never craches. It's great

I suggest you use data recovery software such as EASEUS DataRecoveryWizard to recover files. Download demo version: http://www.easeus.com/download.htm You can use "AdvancedRecovery" to scan your corrupted partition. After the scan is complete, the lost file will be displayed in DataRecoveryWizard, you can select them and recover them.

Like response 1 said, make sure you slave it with another system and you can get all your data back. I know, because my 120 GB drive crashed, I installed a new HD on my system and slaved the old drive and got everything back. Response 2 is a good one, BUT, I found that a program called file scavenger $39 was much better and found almost everything on a crashed drive that was already reformatted, and KEPT the same file names, which Data Back doesn't do....I've tried it. Try slaving your HD first, before paying for something to get back your files. Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

I've had the exact same problem before where it keeps telling you to format the drive. The error may just come up suddenly. You can use getdataback, which is really good... Or you can go to westerdigital's site and download their disk scanning utility which also fixes the problem. That'll save you a lot of time... This also happens on Maxtor drives and you can fix it the same way. PGalido Galido Networks http://galido.net