External HardDisk help needed

My pc is window 7 ultimate 32x, my laptop is Window 7 home premium 64x, my friends laptop should be the same as me as we go to the same school and same class which is also my classmates. My mum's lappy is window vista not working vista what.

Nope, just the USB into the pc.

Anyone? Please?

ganqile said:

Anyone? Please?

You didn't respond to a recent question above, regarding more details about "your friend's computer, make and brand".

You said everything was working perfectly for this external drive before you gave it to your friend so that he could copy something to it for you. Worked great before that, on all kinds of other Windows computers.

Gave it to your friend for copying something onto it for you, got it back from your friend, and it no longer works.

Don't you think information about your friend's computer setup and what he might have done to your external drive that made it unusable on your own computer(s) as soon as he returned it to you is relevant to us, in trying to help you resolve the problem?

If his computer is a Mac, that's a problem I would think... if somehow your hard drive got reformatted for a Mac. External USB drives formatted for a Mac cannot be used on Windows machines... without first re-formatting them back as NTFS drives for Windows, which of course loses all the data on them.

But even if formatted for a Mac (HFS), the drive itself is "visible"... so that it can be reformatted to NTFS for Windows. In your case, the drive isn't even "visible" any longer, to any computer you've tried to connect it to!

If your friend's laptop is like yours, another Windows laptop, then it seems unlikely it could have just "broken" by being connected to his laptop to copy a file onto it.

And yet...


So, why don't you ask your friend what he did to your drive while it was in his possession?

Let me ask 1 question before I ask him. Can I reformat my harddisk without it being visible?

ganqile said:

Let me ask 1 question before I ask him. Can I reformat my harddisk without it being visible?

No.

If Windows can't see it at all, then there's no way to use the FORMAT built into Windows to format it.

And if Partition Wizard standalone can't see it at all, then there's no way to use the FORMAT built into PW standalone to format it.

It must be visible to SOME program capable of doing FORMAT, in order to be able to do that FORMAT.

That's why I was hoping Partition Wizard standalone boot CD could see it, because PW can do FORMAT... as long as it can see a drive. Being standalone and not running under Windows I was hoping it might work. But your test revealed it wouldn't work, either because (a) PW standalone cannot see external USB drives, or (b) there's something broken about your drive now that simply makes it not visible to any software, running under Windows or standalone, which would otherwise be able to see it.

And we also know that it's not visible under Windows, and therefore not visible to Partition Wizard running under Windows.

It's just not visible, for some probably hardware malfunction reason.


So, unless the manufacturer can provide you with some type of standalone formatting utility (and I don't know how that would even work, if say you have to run it under Windows but while under Windows the drive is simply not visible) or suggest something else if you call them on their support phone, I don't know what to say.

If the drive is still under its warranty period, you could get them to RMA a replacement to you at no cost (other than perhaps shipping). You've already said you can live without the data that's currenly on it, as if you're willing to FORMAT the drive you're obviously willing to lose the data on it.

So an RMA replacement for the malfunctioning drive is a reasonable alternative... if it's still under warranty.


But I'm curious to hear what your friend says he did with it while it was in his possession and connected to his laptop.

He just transfer the CSS files.

ganqile said:

He just transfer the CSS files.

Did he "safely remove hardware" before disconnecting, after he was finished with the file COPY?