External back up drive not recognized

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I’m running Win7 Home Premium SP1. I have two external drives I use for back up. Just recently my computer decided to “not recognize” one of those drives. It shows up as a drive in Disk Management, but I can no longer use it for a back up. I tried running a “Disk Check” but it couldn’t be processed because “Windows can’t access the disk”. How do I get things back to normal?

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I’m running Win7 Home Premium SP1. I have two external drives I use for back up. Just recently my computer decided to “not recognize” one of those drives. It shows up as a drive in Disk Management, but I can no longer use it for a back up. I tried running a “Disk Check” but it couldn’t be processed because “Windows can’t access the disk”. How do I get things back to normal?

You could try re-initializing and full formatting the drive from scratch.
If windows is going to be able to recognize the disk at all, this should do it.
The only caveat here is if you have important data backed up to it, because formatting it will of course destroy all data on the drive.
You can refer to the Maintenance forum where there is a sticky entitled “Adding new hard drive and cloning all files to it” for some pointers about initializing and formatting drives.

Also maybe check the bios and see I the drive shows up there.

Cheers,
rstew

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Has the drive got a drive letter allocated in disk management? If it hasn’t, Windows cant recognise it.

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…also, don’t format just yet. I’ve allowed Win7Pro to fix the drive, and almost all of time, the drive is readable and writable again.
Side question set. Are you making OS and data partition image backups to each external HD? I do that over here, so if one ext HD is out momentarily, I can almost always use the other ext HD. Also, how are you ending and exiting the backups? I found out the hard way that one has to “exit gracefully” the ext HDs [?would that be un-mounting internally?] — lest I pay for my mistake later.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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@ Roland

“…how are you ending and exiting the backups? I found out the hard way that one has to “exit gracefully” the ext HDs…

Too many times I have seen problems caused by users disconnecting USB devices without warning Windows first. The “safely remove hardware” icon is placed in the notification area for good reason. If you fail to click that icon and tell Windows you want to disconnect a USB device then wait for Windows to tell you “it is safe to disconnect” then more fool you.

The “safely remove hardware” feature is there for good reason; if you bother to use it then you are telling Windows you are going to disconnect that device so all opened files should be closed. If you ignore the “safely remove hardware” feature and simply disconnect a USB device without warning then don’t be surprised if there are later problems using that device.

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To:rstew – I’ll try your suggestions as a last resort.
To:calimanco – Yes the drive has a letter (K).
To:RolandJS & Coochin: I always use the “safely remove hardware” program when I am removing an external drive.
To:RolandJS: How do you allow WinPro7 to fix the drive – what are the steps? Yes’ I use both back up drives alternatively to make system image backups.

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I formatted the problem drive and stored a system image on it. Everything’s fine now! Problem’s solved. Thanks for your guidance and input. You guys are great!

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lodidad1, for future reference, when I plug an ext HD into a USB port and Windows 7 decides it cannot read it, W7 will generate a pop-up asking if I want W7 to fix the problem. ‘Cause I cannot remember what exe is doing that nor can I remember the exact wording – I cannot tell you right now which W7 EXE [?or dll?] does this.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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RolandJS – Perhaps Win7 Pro gives you a “pop-up” if it can’t read an external drive. However Win7 Home Premium does not have that facility or capability. So I didn’t get an option to have Win7 fix the problem – which eventually was fixed the “hard way”. But thanks for your response.

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