Help-Quick!

tobias123

tobias123

tobias123

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Joined
24 Jul 2006
Posts
113
Hi Everyone,

just done a clean install of windows. Backed up all my files on my 160gb usb HDD. Now the usb HDD is coming up as drive c: and says i must format the drive before i do anything. What has happened and how do i solve it?
I simply can't format the drive as it has extremely important files on it.

Please help as i don't know how to make it a removable device again. Have tried updating drivers and that does not help.

Thanks in advance
 
You're sure you didnt install windows onto the removable drive? (Ive heard people installing onto their iPod by mistake ;P.)

If you unplug the usb drive, boot the machine, you should have a C: Drive, correct? Now you plug the drive, but it also wants to be the C: Drive? Odd, removable drives should take up the next free drive letter.

Try Right Clicking my computer -> Manage -> Disk Management area. See if you can find the removable drive and re-letter the removable drive to get it to show up in windows explorer.
 
ok it's saying my removable drive is drive c:, yet my system is installed on drive e: (my internal) so that would make it the correct drive?!
 
Yeah basically whats happened is when you've formatted on the boot disk windows has seen there is already a C: Partition (From the USB Drive) and called your internal drive something else. Unplug the USB Drive, format the internal to C:, Reinstall windows, Plug in the usb drive and it *should* take the next letter. If it doesn't THEN use the disk management area that I talked of previously.
 
yeah, if you take the usb stick out now, with the files on it, put it in another room and the files will be fine :)
 
Just done a clean install and the same thing happens. Main drive is now c: and usb drive that was reading as storage device is now a named drive as f: and still asking me to format it. Very worried now as it has files i can't lose on it.

PLease can anyone shed light...
 
perhaps the partition has been freed when you left it plugged in during Windows setup, although I'm surprised that its showing as unformatted.

Provided you havent scrubbed it (using something like eraser) then the files will be there (even a format doesnt actually 'delete' files). Not sure on the best advise to get it back however - I would imagine data recovery software would be your first port of call. I can't recommend any as its never happened to me (touch wood).
 
Could it be to do with master and slave settings? I know sata is set to be primary drive but it says in boot that second slave is IDE?

any idea how to change the usb drive to storage device rahther than generic?
 
tobias123 said:
Could it be to do with master and slave settings? I know sata is set to be primary drive but it says in boot that second slave is IDE?

any idea how to change the usb drive to storage device rahther than generic?
Click to expand...

Should have nothing to do with the Master/Slave as that just shows the order of the drives on the IDE cable.

Check out software recovery software, that'll probably allow the recovery of your files
 
tobias123 said:
its saying in disk management that this drive is 100% free. Am i screwed?
Click to expand...

Can you take a screenshot of your disk management panel please? If the drive has a drive letter it means it has a partition as far as I know. If the partition is gone then obviously something has happened when you left it in during the first windows setup. If that is the case and the partition is gone then the data is still on the drive but you'll need recovery tools to either a) restore the partition or b) read the drive without a partition to recover the files onto another drive.
 
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