External Hard Drive "needs to be formatted"

[Skummel Maske]

This is about an USB-drive. I believe the problem stems from when my system froze while I was copying files from it earlier today, although it might've appeared earlier without me knowing as I haven't really used it in a while.

Anyways, after the freeze I got the message that the drive would need to be formatted before I could use it (or before windows could access it). I tried releasing it and replugging it, but it didn't help. After a reboot, things seemed fine again. I could browse the folders, at least. However, when I started copying files again, it pretty much lost contact. Mid-transfer I got a message that the file could not be found, and I could no longer open any files on the drive. Afterwards it's gone back to "needs formatting" status again.

To put an even stranger twist on things, I just tried the same copy process on my laptop. It worked. What can this possibly mean?

..and of course, I've got 133gb of data stored on it, while the hard drive on my computer has about 80gb available. So much for recovery.

[prophetik music]

what os? is it the same on both your desktop and your lappy?

[Skummel Maske]

Well, lappy runs 32-bit Vista while the desktop one runs 64-bit.

[Salluz]

Well, lappy runs 32-bit Vista while the desktop one runs 64-bit.

Slightly different, but that shouldn't matter. Don't they both run on a file system of NTFS?

[prophetik music]

that depends on the hard drive formatting. maybe 64-bit handles fat32 differently, which is what i'm assuming your external hd is formatted as.

[Skummel Maske]

Yeah, the external drive is the standard FAT32. And yes, both the compters run NTFS. This is a very confusing issue. Maybe I'll have to use the laptop as a "bridge" for transferring files now.

[prophetik music]

i honestly don't know what to tell you. other than the fact that a new hard drive for your desktop is stupid cheap for 500 gigs now. you could get a new one, offload the files from your external, format it, and reload it.

[Millipede]

Something similar happened to me just a little while ago (I think it's about 5 or 6 posts down). I was transferring files to my mobile hard drive and for some reason the process failed and I got a delayed write fail with an error message that told me the hard drive was corrupt and needed to be formatted.

I ended up fixing it by running the error checking tool under properties>tools>error checking. I only ended up losing the files that were being transferred when the error occurred. However, I'm working on XP so it might be different on Vista. Another thing I did after fixing the problem was optimize the drive for quick removal to avoid delayed write fails from caching data.

[prophetik music]

that's a good point. let vista attempt to 'fix' the drive and clean it up. there's a chance it'll fix it. probably not, but it's worth trying out.

[starla]

Glad that fixed it for you. Fat32 is old and messy, and can corrupt easy.

Come on guys, this is like the 5th thread i've seen where people have mentioned they use an external drive for anything other than file transfer and backup. Externals are not meant to be on 24/7, they don't have proper heat dissipation.

cmonnnn guiiise

[prophetik music]

i used it as my torrent drive for a long time, but it gets warmer and warmer. i only switch it on for backup now.

[Skummel Maske]

Starla, I didn't really know that USB drives were unreliable until now. I've only used mine for storage of files I don't use often enough to bother keeping on my internal drives.

Anyways, the error-checking didn't do anything, it went through the entire process way too quickly, as if there wasn't anything to check. It's strange how it works everywhere else though. Does the computer cache any settings for external drives?

[Shadow Wolf]

Actually, some of the nicer ones do come with a heatsink and a fan.

[starla]

Yes, and they fail too. There's just not a good amount of air flow.

If it's going to be static, really, put it in your case.