USB external drive problem

jem16

I have a 1Tb external usb hard drive. It's split into 3 partitions, one NTFS and 2 FAT32 drives so that my son can use it as backup for his Mac.

It's been working fine until my son todl me today that Crashplan had been unable to connect to my PC for his backup. On checking the drive, the NTFS partition is fine but Windows 7 syas the other two partitions ( which it sees with the associated drive letter) need formatting before use.

I tried ocnnecting it to my Windows XP laptop but same problem.

If I use Partition Wizard I can see the two partitions and even explore their contents but cannot.

Any ideas as to what's gone wrong?

fwor

jem16 wrote: »

If I use Partition Wizard I can see the two partitions and even explore their contents but cannot.

A lot depends on the words that you missed out from that sentence. If you really can explore the content of both partitions then they must have a valid filesystem present. If so, then the most likely explanation is that the filesystems are corrupted. Have you tried "chkdsk x:" at the command line in Windows (where x: is the drive letter)?

If not, I recommend using chkdsk ~without~ the /f switch first - it should tell you whether the filesystem is valid without making any changes, at which point you can decide whether to go ahead and try and fix any problems found.

jem16

fwor wrote: »

A lot depends on the words that you missed out from that sentence.

Don't know what happened to that sentence.

What I was trying to say that with Partition Wizard, it shows the two partitions formatted as Fat32. If I right click the menu gives the choice to "explore". Doing that lets me see the folders within - they are basically Crashplan backups - but haven't gone any further as they are Mac files. This is within the Partition Wizard program.

In Windows Explorer it says both partitions need formatting and shows RAW as its file system.

If you really can explore the content of both partitions then they must have a valid filesystem present. If so, then the most likely explanation is that the filesystems are corrupted. Have you tried "chkdsk x:" at the command line in Windows (where x: is the drive letter)?

If not, I recommend using chkdsk ~without~ the /f switch first - it should tell you whether the filesystem is valid without making any changes, at which point you can decide whether to go ahead and try and fix any problems found.

I haven't tried any checking as yet.