Hi all,

This is my first post on this site, and my first post on any forum dedicated to electronics repair. I will admit that I'm a newbie to computer repair (I'm a small engines mechanic, so throw any questions my way about your chainsaws and trimmers), so I might not understand all technological terminology, but I will do my best to follow along and do some homework.

That said, the other day, my 500gb Maxtor One Touch III made a clicking noise when I started it up. Windows was not able to read it by its name (I call my external hard drive "Charlie"), and instead assigned it a letter. I went to explore it, and I was informed that the hard drive had to be formatted to be used.

Any ideas? While I've never really worked on electronics before, I had no problem opening things up and playing with the guts/replacing parts. Any help would be very much greatly appreciated. This has been a lesson for me regarding the importance of backing information up on DVDs.

Thanks!

Bryan

This symptom is always bad news, and is usually not a "DIY fix". Depending on the exact cause (which you can't tell without further diagnosis and perhaps opening the drive in a cleanroom), you may be risking further damage (and more difficult data recovery) by allowing the drive to run.

Out of interest, is it possible that this external drive has been dropped / knocked?

If the data on that disk has significant value to you, then now is the time to consult a DR company. With the right professional disk imaging equipment, this situation might be rescued by a good DR company, before things get any worse, and without needing much (if any) expensive cleanroom work - if you are lucky. If you say where you are in the USA, then some forum members are open to being approached directly (or, if you don't mind about shipping to elsewhere in the USA or beyond, then obviously that opens up a wider range of options to you).

If the value of the data is minimal, then (at some risk of losing the data completely, so that even a DR company can't recover it, and also depending on your skill level with PCs), there may be some DIY recovery you can try, if you decide that you definitely won't be using the services of a DR company, and your other option is to toss the drive into the bin. (Although you'd probably want to destroy the drive totally in that situation, before throwing it away, if there was any personal information on it.)


That just means that Windows can't read the filesystem, but it can probably read the MBR, since it did show a drive letter for that drive. Do not accept that recommendation to format the drive - Windows is behaving as if this is a new and unformatted disk, and that is why it is making the recommendation, but in this situation, formatting the disk (or attempting to do so) is the wrong thing to do.


Yes. Disks can fail at any time.