External Hard drive... one of the folders

[Snake eyeS]

wont open and asks if i want to format it.

I have a WD 500gb external hard drive, which i have several folders within, films, music, TV etc. I can access all the folders apart from the TV folder, which has a message about formatting. I imagine if i click yes all data will be lost. Have I already lost to contents? Or can it be saved.

[TurricanII]

This is odd ad normally you are prompted to format when opening the drive itself. I would right click the folder and choose explore - does that open it up? Further, you could run chkdsk G: /F where GL is the letter of your USB drive. This will try and repair the folder structure but it cold disappear altogether

[amir_j]

Snake eyeS said:

wont open and asks if i want to format it.

I have a WD 500gb external hard drive, which i have several folders within, films, music, TV etc. I can access all the folders apart from the TV folder, which has a message about formatting. I imagine if i click yes all data will be lost. Have I already lost to contents? Or can it be saved.

Try a different Operating System (e.g. download PuppyLinux iso file and burn to a CD,then boot from this cd and try accessing)

[TotalControl]

Definitely try another operating system. My WD drive wouldn't open in XP but would happily allow me to explore my files once plugged into Windows 2000. Funnily, Windows 7 allowed access too.

[joe_90]

My exact same drive did this, it was farked. I tried all sorts, Mac's, linux etc etc, some would read the contents (FAT) but not the actual files.

Copy what you can off now, i did that, and the files it seemed to copy were just junk

Edited by joe_90 on Tuesday 20th April 10:58