New External Disc Drive Help Please
IceDragonArt
Posts: 12,759
So I just got all of my content as well as all of my photos etc. loaded to the new disc drive from my laptop. Was working fine until tonight. Its about 3 weeks old. It just stopped working. If I move it to another port it tells me I have to format it before I can use it. But is already been formatted and reformatting will delete all of my data. Some of which is irresplaceable. Which is why I got the external drive. Can anyone help? I'm seriously about to panic. And cry.
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Sonja, did you try unplugging the drive and rebooting your computer without the drive and then plug it back in and reboot again? After that, can you read anything on the drive at all or is it still telling you that you have to reformat?
If what was suggested before doesn't work, grab an ubuntu or other linux distro and make a bootable USB. Linux may be able to read it and you may be able to move your stuff safely before format. Also, if you have a friend or family with a computer you can use, try hooking it up to theirs. I had an external that my PC stopped reading, but my parent's computer read it fine.
I did. I think whats happening is the cord is not fitting tight enough into either the laptop port, or into the drive itself. If I can get them set just right, its all still there. I know its not the ports themselves because they work just fine with other stuff, like the mouse etc. So, I think I will have to get another cord and see if that works first. Its one of those awful split ends like the one to my phone. Hate those and have nothing but problems with them (with the phone too, exchanged the car charger cord FOUR times before I got one that fit tight enough to work. Horrible design. Wonder if I can use the cord to my phone. Looks like it would fit lol.
Thank you. I have a PC (don't know why I didn't think of that lol) It also has an external drive, different model, works beautifully. Next time, I will buy the same one I have for my PC.
I also ordered a flash drive so I can at least move my pictures to that for safety. I've been working my way through the stuff on my PC but haven't gotten to my laptop yet. Plus, high gigabyte flash drives are expensive.
I have all my free content on one USB drive and my DIM content on another internal drive, all backuped up on another usb HDD. I am not taking any chances anymore. HAd too many HDD's fail on me without backups.
Ya, I am going to have to save up for a secondary back up for my back up apparently lol. Right now, I am more worried about the photos, worst case scenario with Daz is I have to load all that content and re categorize. Which would really really stink, but its doable. The photos though are not replaceable so I will be moving those to a flash drive asap.
All of my important data is backed up on 2 different drives. I have 2 2TB and 2 4TB
If you really think your cable is the culprit you can buy an usb extender.
Second option, is to try to get the disk out of the box and put it in an other external usb enclosure that you can buy for a few bucks
However I don't really think that is the problem and Linux won't really help here.
Your partition table or boot sector may be corrupt, so there is something to check before buying hardwares :
Get Testdisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Follow the step by step guide http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
Do a quick search and try to list your files. If that works, you can save your partition structure and work again with the disk.
Otherwise go on with the guide and do deeper search or boot sector recovery
If you just want to recover some pictures there is also Photorec from the same author http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
There is a step by step guide http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step but be aware that the process can take a huge amount of time depending on the size of your disk
Photos yeah prescious I so get it. You got a DVD/Blueray burner...get them brun to disc when thye are on a stable drive. Do two copies. :)
One thing I ran into on my laptop with an external usb drive was Windows failing to recognize the drive - sometimes I'd get an error message that it was a duplicate device. It turns out that my laptop does not actually shut down when I select 'shut down' - it just goes into deep hibernation. And I had two usb ports on the same end and wasn't paying attention to which one I used.
Once I got into that mode, I had to go into device manager, expand the Universal Serial Bus controllers list, and then one by one, starting at the bottom - delete them. You get prompted to reboot on each delete but can wait until the last one and then reboot. Windows will re-install the device drivers and then find and re-install the drive.
Try this if the new cable doesn't change anything.
Great info everyone thank you very much. I went out and got another, longer cable and so far this one is working. But, I ordered a flash drive and will be pulling the pictures off of it as soon as it arrives tomorrow or Tuesday.