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Hard Drive Support Support Forum for hard drives; Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Toshiba

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Old 01-29-2008, 02:10 PM   #1 (permalink)
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[SOLVED] Maxtor External HD G:\ Not Formatted!

Hello everyone. Recently I unplugged my Maxtor 500G external HD from my laptop accidentally without "safely removing." However, when I replugged the drive into the laptop, it said "Drive G:\ not formatted. Format now?" Anyway, I wasn't about to do that, since I have 250GB of stuff on it. Also, EasyRecovery isn't a great option, since I have no other drive to put the stuff onto.

I came across your site, which seems to have fixed countless HD problems :), so I read a number of threads on using testdisk to fix broken drive/partition tables.

I followed all of the steps in the stickied thread.


However, when I try to "Write," I get this screen


I'm not sure if the HD was NTFS or FAT32 at the start. I think perhaps it may be FAT32, since it doesn't recognize a valid NTFS Boot sector.

At this point, I tried "Rebuild BS" to see if that would yield any more options. But alas I arrive at this:


When I try to select Repair MFT, I get:


At this point I'm getting quite desperate, any help is appreciated!

Last edited by calleinad; 01-29-2008 at 02:37 PM.
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Old 01-29-2008, 02:27 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Re: Maxtor External HD G:\ Not Formatted!

Update: Now for some reason, the drive shows up in Windows Explorer as "D:\" and as a Local Disk. Before, it was only listed as G:\! When I try to open it, it says "The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable" This sounds bad.
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Old 01-30-2008, 04:40 AM   #3 (permalink)
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Re: Maxtor External HD G:\ Not Formatted!

Hi, welcome to TSF.

At the second screen you posted you should've selected "Backup BS".
Try that.
When TestDisk has loaded the backup boot sector - close the program and restart.
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Old 01-31-2008, 01:22 AM   #4 (permalink)
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Re: Maxtor External HD G:\ Not Formatted!

Hello eneles!

I tried going back to that screen, but every time after I tried the "Write" command, it just took me to the prompt that said I had to reboot. However, the drive was still not functional.

Unfortunately, I decided that it just wasn't worth the hassle, and I reformatted the drive. I hope this doesn't happen again :(.

Thanks for the help!
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Old 01-31-2008, 05:37 AM   #5 (permalink)
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Re: Maxtor External HD G:\ Not Formatted!

OK. I think we could have fixed it.
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