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General discussion

western digital 500gb essential external hard drive problem

Mar 26, 2007 11:48PM PDT

I just bought a western digital 500gb essential external hard drive, plugged it in to my usb2.0 port and it was recognised by "my computer", disk management and device manager. Only problem is it says it needs to be formatted as its RAW data. I know it doesnt need to be as i took it over to my mums house and it worked fine on her pc and she even managed to put a couple of photos on there. She is running win xp home sp2. I'm running win xp home with sp2 as well. I tried running chkdsk and this is what i got:


C:\>chkdsk e: /f
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is New Volume.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File record segment 4 is unreadable.
File record segment 8 is unreadable.
File record segment 9 is unreadable.
File record segment 10 is unreadable.
File record segment 11 is unreadable.
File record segment 12 is unreadable.
File record segment 13 is unreadable.
File record segment 14 is unreadable.
File record segment 16 is unreadable.
File record segment 17 is unreadable.
File record segment 18 is unreadable.
File record segment 19 is unreadable.
File record segment 20 is unreadable.
File record segment 21 is unreadable.
File record segment 22 is unreadable.
File record segment 23 is unreadable.
File record segment 24 is unreadable.
File record segment 25 is unreadable.
File verification completed.


As you can see it says its NTFS but has unreadable segments. This is a brand new hard drive (bought 2 days ago) and i have yet to be able to use it. Any suggestions (apart from taking it from the casing as its under warranty) on how to get it working would be helpful.

Discussion is locked

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Just noted in this forum...
Mar 26, 2007 11:50PM PDT

Was a question about getting such drives ready to use. Maybe I'm dodging the bullets by removing partitions on such drives, creating a new one and letting the OS format the new drive.

Those that just pull it out of the box and start using them tend to make posts like yours.

Bob

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more info
Mar 26, 2007 11:53PM PDT

i generally do format straight off the bat but couldn't on my pc (kept getting to 99% and saying format not finished) so i took it to mums and she formatted it...it works on hers but when i brought it home it was coiming up RAW data and needed top be formatted.

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Then one last test.
Mar 27, 2007 12:48AM PDT

Back to the working machine and retest. If your machine has a defect then fix that.

-> Let me be blunt here. Let's look at what you told about your machine. (not enough to start a conversation about it.)

Bob

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pc specs.
Mar 27, 2007 1:21PM PDT

ok its a windows xp home with service pack 2.

AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2600+
1.60 GHz, 512 Mb of RAM

I have my main drive (cHappy and a slave drive (dHappy plus the external im trying to get working which comes up as e:
The external is connected via USB2.0 (brand new ports so i know they arent faulty) and also has its own power source to the wall.

If there is any other details needed please tell me what you need.

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New ports but
Mar 27, 2007 9:27PM PDT

Not a word about motherboard drivers, if you have CD/DVD emulators, etc. The list can go on but without the full details I'd be guessing badly.

Bob

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is this what you need?
Mar 27, 2007 10:45PM PDT

ok motherboard is an msi i think. i have ati raedon drivers. i have a dvd-rom drive (IHappy and a firewire port.

is there anything else? im willing to give any info needed to fix this problem.

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What version motherboard drivers?
Mar 27, 2007 11:00PM PDT

Many msi boards don't behave proper with Windows until we install said drivers. The details seem to be missing here.

Bob

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drivers installed
Mar 27, 2007 11:10PM PDT

the msi drivers are:

msi live update 3
msi goodmem
msi lockbox
msi wmlinfo
msi securedoc

they are the ones that came on the disc. they are all up to date

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About Lockbox and
Mar 27, 2007 11:23PM PDT

" Then removed MSI Lockbox and SecureDoc. Reboot and
now right back to the multiple user's interface."

Some are reporting issues with those items. Do you need them?

Bob

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not sure
Mar 27, 2007 11:33PM PDT

im not sure if i need them. how can i check if i do?

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The simple test.
Mar 27, 2007 11:35PM PDT

Do you use them?

Did you read any documents on what they do?

Bob

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dont use
Mar 27, 2007 11:48PM PDT

i dont think i use them...if they are actual applications then i deffinately dont use them. so this means its ok to get rid of them?

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I would.
Mar 28, 2007 12:04AM PDT

Some items such as CD/DVD emulators as well as the noted items could interfere with USB drive operations.

If it still doesn't work but works with other machines the new PCI USB 2.0 card could be defective.

Bob

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Pls help me out...
Sep 29, 2010 7:28PM PDT

I am also facing d same problem..
This happened me for d first tym...
It consists of much data which is very important..
Can anyone say me what to do to view my files in that drive ..!!!
I performed chkdsk wid all possible ways ..but nothin happened..

Thanks in advance ..Sad

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Let's say it is the same issue.
Sep 30, 2010 9:42AM PDT