Hi, I bought a WD external HD and i've loaded most of my things on to it. It worked fine until i loaded all my files onto it. Now It will show up in my Safely Remove Hardware thing but thats about it. Under the properties it says "This device is working properly." but nothing shows up under computers. I've tried many different laptops. I've tried going to disk management and it won't let me initialize. It says "The drive cannot find the sector request" I have some important document in there and all my music and movies. I've tried WD's help, but it looks like they are trying to beat around. I don't know what else to do. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Hi there

Edit: I can see you have a ongoing thread in our malware removal forum. It would be best if you had that sorted out, before attempting to fix this issue.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms837481.aspx

Heres our own guide on how to run CHKDSK;

http://forums.whatthetech.com/How_run_CHKD...XP_t102348.html

You might have to try run it from the recovery console, if you can't get it to run it from within windows.

http://forums.whatthetech.com/How_run_chkd...ole_t95574.html

If the CHKDSK doesn't do you any good, it is time to look for a file-recovery program, and then format the drive.

A file-recovery program I use myself, is Recuva.


Regards

This post has been edited by Abydos: Jun 30 2009, 07:42 PM

sorry, i got a new laptop and its not XP anymore, its vista. And i'm using a different laptop than the one in the other post.

Hi again

Its ok if it is a different pc. We just don't make alterations on a machine that the malware fighters are working on as well. Their tools, our tools and any other alterating may produce unpredictable results.

Well, since you are running Vista on this machine, CHKDSK should be performed alittle differently. Heres how;

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67612-ch...isk-chkdsk.html


Regards

How do i use the recovery when the hard drive doesn't show up in it? its an external hard drive..

You can try enter the drive letter when using the Recovery console to enter the CHKDSK command.
If the drive letter is known to you. The link also shows how to perform the CHKDSK procedure in
recovery console.

Further USB troubleshooting procedures:

You should also try disconnect all USB periphals, reboot the machine. Connect the periphals once
again, while booted, connect the external drive last and see if the drive turns up. It might be a
matter of a wrongly allocated IRQ number, which is why I always allocate a drive letter further down
the alphabet. My external drive is Q for example.

Right-click the "My computer" icon, choose Manage.
Click disk-management. Once snapped into disk-management, choose action in the upper menu, choose rescan disks.
Double-click disc-management and see if it turns up.

If the above doesn't work, stay in the manage menu, but this time click on device manager.
Choose "show" in the upper menu, and select "show hidden devices".
If it turns up there, right-click and choose update / update driver (Can't remember the exact wording in Vista)
Check if it brings back the drive.


If the USB controllers somehow have gone haywire, do the following;

Open your control panel, and then choose system.
Hardware and then Device manager.
Scroll down to your USB controllers and remove one by one.
Reboot. Once rebooted Vista will install the controllers once again. Any corruption of the controllers will be
rectified during this procedure.

Note: If you are in the manage menu, you can choose device manager from there.


Regards

I couldn't get it to fix it. I've called the place I got it from and they are sending me a new one. I know not to store my stuff in one place from now on. Thank you for your help nonetheless. I really appreciated it.