Hello 🙂
My hard drive (Samsung S2 Portable, 1 TB) seems to have some personal issues, that needs to be dealt with. There’s two problems with it; 1) I get the “You must format to use”-error, and it seems like it really wants to point out this error. When I plug it into my desktop computer it just keeps on giving the message over and over again if I ignore it. 2) It’s not even visible on my computer. It tends to be visible for a couple of minutes, and then dissapear, with the errors beginning to stack up.
When I plug this hard drive into my laptop, I still get the message, but I am able to copy to and from the hard drive.
The hard drive is a couple of years old, but it has never suffered from any falls or been damaged afaik. It receives its power from the computer, and does not have its own power plug.
I’ve tried a lot of fixing programs and tutorials, but those guides doesn’t cover both issues.
Anything will help! 🙂
There are two possible problems with a portable hard drive (external), first, the drive is bad, and second, the case/board is bad. If your external drive is not under warranty and you can figure out how to open the case without destroying it (many can), open it and remove the drive. Plug it into your desktop computer as a second internal drive (computer off, then restart), nd see if it is recognized. If it is, back up the contents ans consider getting a suitable external case for it. If it does not, look in Disk Manager to see what it shows there and also run factory test utility or Seatools (Seagate) for the quick test and see what it tells you about the drive.
Post back results.
Improperly removing an external hard drive can corrupt the file system on the partition.
Look for the drive in Window Disk Management. If the file type is reported as RAW then that is the problem.
I don’t think this is your problem but it is a step in the process. Post back what you find in Disk Management.
Hi guys
I backed up all the data, and let the disk do what it really wanted to – to format. Seems to have solved the problems. Guess it just needed a quick reminder that life isn’t that bad after all.
Thanks for your inputs though, you seem like a nice bunch of people 🙂