Windows 7: Unknown file system on external hard drive

I have discovered that my external hard drive is showing "unknown file system" hence why it will not show anywhere on the computer for instance under disk management or my computer, is there any way to get around this? like can a file system be recovered?

Is this the same Iomega drive you had problems with before?and did you follow the advice of reformatting it on a different machine before trying to use it again?

Yes, this is the same hard drive Im talking about, the drive wont show up on another machine so Im unable to format it in that way

Did you format the drive before you tried encrypting it?

There was no instructions with the product to tell me to do this else I would have done, Ive never used one before so was unaware. Are you supposed to format them before first use? Ive since returned the item as Ive had enough of the stress with it. Thank you very much for everyones help here. Iomega are very poor with their instructions and support.

It should have worked straight out of the box, but you seem to have got a duff one. Don't let it put you off using one, they are very useful. Personally, I use Truecrypt for encryption as its free and open source.

Yes it seems that way, I mean should a drive really lose its file system after encryption? doesnt make sense to me. Hopefully another day I will try another drive, do you recommend any? I dont fancy another Iomega....

I have to say that I have had no problems with my Iomega 1TB USB drive, but I have to agree that their support is dreadful. It took more than six months to get a firmware fix on their Data Link Director to get the advertised You Tube to work.


I see on their forum that the only thing they could suggest to you was to get a new cable.

I agree their customer support is dreadful, yep thats all they suggested a new cable, but I couldnt see how it could be that lol. Sounds like you had work on your hands getting your firmware fixed, but glad your hard drive works OK. Maybe I got a duff lol.

Hello angeleyes, im not sure if it can works, but if you can obtain a copy of ubuntu os, you can boot from cd/dvd and try to mount the iomega drive and wipe out or format again, hope it help