This happened last Friday when while I was watching HIMYM , accidentally, I removed my external Hard Disk.
As usual , I stayed calm and replugged the USB cable , but to my horror , windows scared the hell out of me by displaying something like this:
"Raw disk detected, you need to format the disk.Do you want to format it? Yes -- No"
If I pressed no, the message disappeared but on trying to access the drive again, it would come back .On searching a bit on net, I tried out using windows utility "chkdsk", which can help detect and repair faulty sectors.But to my despair, it too didn't work out, prompting similar excuse of the disk being raw.
The harddisk I was using was a 1TB HCTU3 Buffalo Ministation Portable Disk containing all my important data.The fact that I was unable to access it freaked me out.
With USB devices, usually whether it is virus removal or non-compatibility of drivers in windows or maybe some other issue too, trying out the device on a linux machine would generally be my ray of hope.As I have Ubuntu too installed on my machine, I booted into it to check out, if it could help.But here too it was unable to mount with the device giving similar kind of messages
(but much more elaborate and scary :P).
So now was the time to dig the net using the mighty Google to see if there was any way out.But before that I checked out with the warranty of my device.Unlike for other electronic devices, for which the warranty is generally for six-months to a year, to my surprise this disk had a warranty of 3 years :)
In my dear developing country, unfortunately, I came to know from the Buffalo website that there is only one service center and that too in Chennai.But there was a little problem here.I couldn't find the hd box and bill(which because I got from online shopping website Infibeam.com would be a mutli folded piece of regular paper, I usually didn't take care of).Anyways, from my earlier experiences with iBall wherein inspite of bill, I was able to avail the warranty on the basis of S/N of the device, I tried to call and ask if they could too.
After about half hr of continuous trial to their call center(bored of listening "All our customer executives are busy , please hold the line or try again later"), I finally got connected.I started out with the hard-disk problem and on telling the type of error, he immediately told that "Sir, your hd is corrupted , you need to reformat it.",to which I immediately asked if I could recover data as it was very important and he replied "Sorry but its not possible.You need to format it.Right click on the disk icon and click format.If it doesn't work , you can call back and we can try to help out".As I called them up while I was at work, I couldn't try out.On reaching home,I tried out using format - Selecting the default quick format and format label, and pressed "START".
Waiting for a minute, windows(sad to blame it) disappointed me again , saying " Unable to complete Format".
Again, I tried formatting in linux. But now unlike before, my disk wasn't being detected in linux.
Hmm... Its been a real long story and I guess I have already bored you by explaining my trials.Cutting down the other various tools,trials and things I tried out, let me jump directly to the method to recover/reformat any usb storage device:
As usual , I stayed calm and replugged the USB cable , but to my horror , windows scared the hell out of me by displaying something like this:
"Raw disk detected, you need to format the disk.Do you want to format it? Yes -- No"
If I pressed no, the message disappeared but on trying to access the drive again, it would come back .On searching a bit on net, I tried out using windows utility "chkdsk", which can help detect and repair faulty sectors.But to my despair, it too didn't work out, prompting similar excuse of the disk being raw.
The harddisk I was using was a 1TB HCTU3 Buffalo Ministation Portable Disk containing all my important data.The fact that I was unable to access it freaked me out.
With USB devices, usually whether it is virus removal or non-compatibility of drivers in windows or maybe some other issue too, trying out the device on a linux machine would generally be my ray of hope.As I have Ubuntu too installed on my machine, I booted into it to check out, if it could help.But here too it was unable to mount with the device giving similar kind of messages
(but much more elaborate and scary :P).
So now was the time to dig the net using the mighty Google to see if there was any way out.But before that I checked out with the warranty of my device.Unlike for other electronic devices, for which the warranty is generally for six-months to a year, to my surprise this disk had a warranty of 3 years :)
In my dear developing country, unfortunately, I came to know from the Buffalo website that there is only one service center and that too in Chennai.But there was a little problem here.I couldn't find the hd box and bill(which because I got from online shopping website Infibeam.com would be a mutli folded piece of regular paper, I usually didn't take care of).Anyways, from my earlier experiences with iBall wherein inspite of bill, I was able to avail the warranty on the basis of S/N of the device, I tried to call and ask if they could too.
After about half hr of continuous trial to their call center(bored of listening "All our customer executives are busy , please hold the line or try again later"), I finally got connected.I started out with the hard-disk problem and on telling the type of error, he immediately told that "Sir, your hd is corrupted , you need to reformat it.",to which I immediately asked if I could recover data as it was very important and he replied "Sorry but its not possible.You need to format it.Right click on the disk icon and click format.If it doesn't work , you can call back and we can try to help out".As I called them up while I was at work, I couldn't try out.On reaching home,I tried out using format - Selecting the default quick format and format label, and pressed "START".
Waiting for a minute, windows(sad to blame it) disappointed me again , saying " Unable to complete Format".
Again, I tried formatting in linux. But now unlike before, my disk wasn't being detected in linux.
Hmm... Its been a real long story and I guess I have already bored you by explaining my trials.Cutting down the other various tools,trials and things I tried out, let me jump directly to the method to recover/reformat any usb storage device: