Thread: The New "What did you do with your Z today" (with off topic replies) IV
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Old 02-15-2013, 10:17 AM   #920 (permalink)
JARblue
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LunaZ View Post
Question for you guys with all-knowing computer skillZ:
My computer recently installed a Windows update (I have 7 Ultimate with SP2) and one of my external hard drives is no longer a "My Book", but shows up as a "Local Disk" that I can't access without formatting it.
Is there a way around this? I don't want to reformat it and lose all the data that's on there. It worked just fine last night.
I've read some articles about this problem online, but I'm not getting the gist of what's being said on the various forums.

I ken haz help pleez?
Unfortunately, external hard drives are notorious for failing like this. From your following posts, it looks like you have tried most all of the easy fixes.

( Click to show/hide )
Assuming the hard drive has failed, there are a couple of possibilities and both will require removing the drive from the external enclosure. If you are able to plug the hard drive into a desktop computer and the drive is recognized in the BIOS, you have a good chance of being able to recover the data with recovery software - generally not cheap unless you torrent and may take a long time depending on the amount of data and how bad the drive is compromised. If you are able to recover the data, it is likely you can reformat and reuse the drive, though it may have bad sectors or other problems that make it a poor choice for storing any critical data. If the drive is not recognized in the BIOS, then you're likely looking at an expensive data recovery solution by a specialty company (last time we used one it was mission critical data and a weekend emergency and cost just shy of $5K)


Quote:
Originally Posted by blackcherry20 View Post
Jar and Happy gurus.....usually just a reboot fixes me up....i suppose you've tried that
Good job, Ms. BC! When in doubt, reboot

Quote:
Originally Posted by LunaZ View Post
Yup, I've tried the obvious routes.
Unplugging, rebooting, restoring to last week... hammer, duct tape...
I usually don't need the hammer until I am removing the hard drive from the external enclosure. And duct tape only if I put the drive back together
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