External Hard Drive Problem

[Guest]

Hey, I looked on here but couldn't find a definite answer about my specific
problem. I just hooked my usb external hard drive up to my new laptop, but
whenever i try to access it, i get a message saying i must format the disk
before i can use it. Surely there must be a way around this? I don't really
have a way to format it since all of my documents are on there. Any help
would be appreciated

 

[JerryM \(ID\)]

If you go into disk management, can you see the drive?
Is the drive Healthy?

 

[Michal Kawecki]

Hey, I looked on here but couldn't find a definite answer about my
specific
problem. I just hooked my usb external hard drive up to my new
laptop, but
whenever i try to access it, i get a message saying i must format the
disk
before i can use it. Surely there must be a way around this? I don't
really
have a way to format it since all of my documents are on there. Any
help
would be appreciated

Probably a bootsector of this partition is corrupt. Check it, recover
from spare copy or rebuild from scratch using Testdisk.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/
http://www.cgsecurity.org/phpwiki/index.php/examples

 

[Guest]

It is not a bootable drive; it is for storage only!

 

[Michal Kawecki]

It's meaningless. Bootsectors are parts of ALL partitions. It's
absolutly not important for what do you use them.