# Help please - cannot access external drive **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 7, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923 "2011-10-07T19:10:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/1 "2011-10-07T19:10:32Z")
I have an external drive that is loaded with music, photos, etc. I wanted to re-arrange my USB cord / port configuration, so I unplugged it, then plugged it into another USB port. Well now I’m getting a message telling me I have to format drive J if I want to use it. And it shows up in Explorer, but I cannot access it or see its contents. Any thoughts? Thanks! mmm ---
**Author:** ![Al\_Bundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@Al\_Bundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al_Bundy)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/2 "2011-10-07T20:23:00Z")
Possible things to try: Plug it into another computer and see if it reads. If it does, go back and test the first computer. Remove and replace the data cable several times. You will have to open the box to do this. Try free software like Glary’s or Easeus Partition Drive just to look at it. Ultimately, you could pull the drive and place it on a direct cable, IDE or SATA and see if it reads there. Remember to set it as secondary. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/3 "2011-10-07T23:04:39Z")
I’d recommend trying to connect it to the original USB port. (You said that you moved it to a different one.) I’ve had weird things happen where a device will work on one USB port but not another one. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/4 "2011-10-09T04:25:49Z")
And whatever happens, buy a second USB drive (they’re cheap!) for regular backup. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/5 "2011-10-09T22:49:54Z")
Thanks, all. I tried various USB cables and ports, different computers, each time I was told I have to format the drive before using it. In retrospect, I suspect the drive had already been failing as it had become ridiculously slow to load files of any significant size (photos, mostly). I ended up just buying a new 2 TB drive (great excuse to upgrade). I went with a Seagate this time as this was my second Western Digital to fail. > [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > And whatever happens, buy a second USB drive (they’re cheap!) for regular backup. Don’t you worry about that; I already had two externals (one for main, the other solely for back ups). Because of that, I didn’t lose a thing. It’s still a pain to make everything right again, though. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunzio_Tavulari)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/6 "2011-10-10T01:09:40Z")
The symptoms point toward corruption of the Master File Table that tells the computer how to handle the disk. With a backup, you probably could have formatted and resued the disk, creating a new MFT. As the price of large drives keeps going down, I think it was correct to replace it instead. It would have continued to generate errors. I agree with the move to abnother brand as well. Western Digital has been the least reliable for me over the past decade. I’m currently bullish on Samsung although they are much louder than other brands. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/7 "2011-10-10T01:18:01Z")
Since drive failure seems inevitable, I think it would be a useful feature if a drive came with built-in software that periodically scans for signs of impending death. And then flashes a warning light when such problems are first detected. Of course, I’m not sure the manufacturers want to say or do anything that would acknowledge that their products could possibly bite the big one. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/8 "2011-10-10T04:32:54Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > Since drive failure seems inevitable, I think it would be a useful feature if a drive came with built-in software that periodically scans for signs of impending death. And then flashes a warning light when such problems are first detected. They already do! It’s called S.M.A.R.T. (I can’t remember what that stands for) and is built into nearly all drives now. Basically, it keeps count of about a couple dozen ‘events’ (like read errors, seek errors, sector reallocations, etc.) But there is no warning light to flash on drives; you have to use a piece of software to check these counts, compare them to the typical threshold, and do something if they show the disk is starting to fail. I use HD Tune, which shows a lot of information about your drives, including these counts (current, best, & worst) & comparable thresholds. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/9 "2011-10-10T04:49:02Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > But there is no warning light to flash on drives; you have to use a piece of software to check these counts, compare them to the typical threshold, and do something if they show the disk is starting to fail. If everything works right, Win7 will pop up a notice that your drive is going to fail shortly, and that you should back up everything on it. SMART isn’t always so… smart though. I had a drive go bad on a RAID1 array and the only notice was that disk throughput dropped like a rock. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/10 "2011-10-10T09:30:04Z")
> [@Nanoda](#): > > If everything works right, Win7 will pop up a notice that your drive is going to fail shortly, and that you should back up everything on it. > > SMART isn’t always so… smart though. I had a drive go bad on a RAID1 array and the only notice was that disk throughput dropped like a rock. Did the throughput plummet occur after it was too late to save the data? Win7 told me nothing about the imminent death of my drive. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/11 "2011-10-10T09:33:12Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > I use HD Tune, which shows a lot of information about your drives, including these counts (current, best, & worst) & comparable thresholds. Is there a recommended free alternative to HD Tune? It looks pretty cool, but it is a bit pricey (and hasn’t been updated in over a year). mmm ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/12 "2011-10-10T10:32:53Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > Is there a recommended free alternative to HD Tune? It looks pretty cool, but it is a bit pricey (and hasn’t been updated in over a year). There must be a free version available – I know I didn’t pay for it. Look around on the website – often the pay version is all over the site, with the free version very discretely listed. ---
**Author:** ![Placid\_Liver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e99b99/32.png) [@Placid\_Liver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Placid_Liver)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/13 "2011-10-11T13:44:48Z")
I had a similar issue with an external drive recently. Do you still have the broken drive? If you check the file system is it telling you it’s RAW? If so the solution may be quite simple; there’s an app called TestDisk ([Partition Recovery and File Undelete](http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk)) which will scan the drive and tell you if it can write a new master boot record. It can write as FAT32, and then using Windows’ built-in convert utility you can convert it to NTFS. You use this utility from the command prompt: C:> convert X: /fs:ntfs (X being the drive in question) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Dallas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecccb3/32.png) [@Johnny\_Dallas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Dallas)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-cannot-access-external-drive/598923/14 "2011-10-11T21:21:09Z")
I had this exact problem recently. Eventually when I rebooted, windows asked if I wanted to check the disk for errors, I chose yes and it fixed the issue. First try running error checking in windows, if it fails, boot into safe mode and then try again. Either way, when you restart your machine with the external plugged in, see if you are prompted to run error checking. Here’s a link on how to run chkdsk in Windows 7 > **[Disk Check](https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html)** > > How to Run Disk Check in Windows 7 Don’t give up because this has happened to me twice and I was able to recover both times.