Re: Drive D is suddenly "not formatted"

Tech-Archive recommends: Speed Up your PC by fixing your registry

Thank you very much. Now, I hope you can decipher what I found. There were
a whole series of errors with red icons, most from today. The messages
appear in "clusters" within a short time span. Each showed: Error/Today's
Date/Time/Disk/None (under Category)/7 (under Event)/N/A (under User/ and
the computer ID number. One "cluster" or grouping will be followed by a
series of Information listings -- also for today -- but no errors with them.
Then will come another group of errors, then another group of Information,
etc. There is a very long list of these messages. When I scrolled to the
bottom, I could see that the error messages actually started two days ago
(12/28/2007). What type of information can I extract from this?

Incidentally, my earlier reference to Maxtor was actually to my internal
Drive D (the one with the problem) and not to the I/O Magic extrnal drive.

MaryL


"R. McCarty" <PcEngWork-NoSpam_@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OU0a5LySIHA.5208@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
First off, you describe your issue very well. It's very hard to know why
a drive suddenly reports itself as unformatted. Doubtful it was some kind
of lettering collision. You might want to take a look at the System event
log and see if any IDE controller or drive errors have happened recently.
If I had to speculate, I'd say the Partition table has been corrupted.
There
are recovery tools but your plan to just reformat is probably best. If you
can afford the time, I'd do a full format, not quick just to verify the
integrity
of the drive itself.
Event Log:
Click Start, Run (type) EventVwr.Msc [Enter]
Expand System and scan Right Pane for red icons that denote errors.

"MaryL" <stancole1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eY7cRDySIHA.3916@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I am using a Compaq T8000 (purchased in Nov. 2002), running XP-Home
Edition. Drive C has a capacity120GB with file system NTFS. Drive D (an
internal "slave" drive) should have a capacity of 80GB. I also have
several external USB hard drives that I use for backups and storage.
Everything worked well until today. I was using an I/O Magic portable
hard disk (Maxtor 7200RPM -- 40GB), and I did not notice any problems.
However, after I unplugged the I/O Magic disk, I suddenly could not access
my internal Drive D. It says that Drive D is not formatted. I checked
the I/O Magic disk, and I can't see any problems there -- all my data is
still intact. I rebooted, but still have the same problem -- Drive D is
not formatted (and yet I was able to use it yesterday). I did a search
for this problem and found numerous references to the external disk
suddenly not being formatted, but that is not my problem. The only
relationship in my case is that an external disk was plugged into the USB
port immediately before I saw this problem. None of the sites I read had
a solution except to take the computer to a tech shop to try to retrieve
data.

One other point I should mention is that I did have another I/O Magic
disk that suddenly "went bad" some time ago. By that, I mean that it
could not even be formatted. That time, too, I did not know what caused
the problem -- but the problem was related only to that disk and not to
my internal hard drives.

Now, the good news is that I could go ahead and format Drive D myself
because I will not lose any data. I have multiple backups of
*everything* and even alternate disks from home to the office every few
weeks to make sure that I will have a copy even if everything at home
were destroyed or stolen. However, can anyone explain what might have
happened to cause this problem so I can avoid it in the future? And,
most important, I would hope to avoid a similar problem with Drive C.

Thanks,
MaryL





.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: conflict of software Nero Recordnow Drivers - or ??
    ... disk package anywhere. ... If Not when Would I format a disk? ... For most normal disc burning projects, music CDs, playable DVDs, Photo CDs, ... I know I did have DLA, On both drives and I was using when asked if I ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: OT - Dabs USB hard drive - advice please
    ... > USB "hard drives" are flash memory devices ... They use ordinary 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch hard disk drives ... > Microsoftian file format of VFAT. ...
    (uk.legal)
  • Re: Drive D is suddenly "not formatted"
    ... Disk Management format and check the clusters. ... and not to my internal hard drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Adding memory
    ... Formatting needs a partition to format first. ... Disk manager will do ... Now you must partition and format your new drive. ... where secondary drives are involved ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: 2nd hard drive install
    ... operating system by accessing the Disk Management utility - Start> ... Now you must partition and format your new drive. ... where secondary drives are involved ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)