The disk in drive x is not formatted. Do you want to format it now? Revisited

[cresal]

Hi there. I've run in to the same problem brought up in the techspot post "topic34363"

(sorry i can't link directly, i'm too new of a member for them to allow links in posts, i suppose)

however the solutions are no longer available.

that is, i have an external 1.5T seagate harddrive that i've been using with a nexstar port to store and transfer important data for about 6 months. i had it partitioned into 3 drives. a short while ago i was trying to backup data from a laptop and half way through copying it, the computer said it could no longer find that drive. i turned the external off, on again, and it was fine for a few minutes, then the same thing. since then any time i turn it on it says "The disk in drive F is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?" any time i plug it in to my current computer.

i tried a couple of the programs listed as solutions in the previous thread. Partition Table Doctor no longer exists, and Partition Magic seems to be incompatible with windows 7 (which i'm running). Partition Recovery (same people as Partition Table Doctor) didn't even see the drive at all. does anyone know other programs that might work to get this ****ing drive running long enough for me to pull my data off?

i bought seagate because i'd been told they were solid and dependable, as far as such things go. but i and my boyfriend have had 3 seagate drives die independently in the last year, and not through abuse or neglect. my faith is also dying.

halp?

 

[JMMD]

Try something like GetDataBack and see if it can find the data. Kinda weird you've lost so many drives in such a short time period. I've had two die in the last 10 years. In both cases I was able to get my data off before I lost them completely.

 

[Mizzou]

Just to verify the functionality of the Seagate external drive it might be good idea to attach it to another computer. If it's visible and the file structures appear to be intact then it becomes a matter of isolating the problem on your current system. I encountered a similar problem (same format message) while installing a usb 3 expansion port for an external Verbatim. Problem turned out to be the usb drivers in this case, Windows7 default drivers weren't working but everything cleared up after installing the necessary NEC drivers. Anyway, think the first step would be to determine if the external drive works on another system.