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    External HDD Showing Up but Not Working

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Shadowdare, Apr 7, 2011.

  1. Shadowdare

    Shadowdare Notebook Enthusiast

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    My friend's relatively new external Toshiba 320GB HDD was unplugged accidentally while a large file was being read. It started clicking but it still showed up in Windows. The HDD is still vibrating and sounds like it's still spinning.

    Only one of two partitions show up (the other one flashes and then disappears from the My Computer window). He can't delete or write files to it because it will stall (loading bar). The first partition is in FAT-32 format and the other one is in WBFS format.

    Please help. What do you think the problem and the solution is?
     
    Shadowdare, Apr 7, 2011
    #1
  2. Tinderbox (UK)

    Tinderbox (UK) BAKED BEAN KING

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    Tinderbox (UK), Apr 7, 2011
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  3. Shadowdare

    Shadowdare Notebook Enthusiast

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    I'm not sure about that but I'll let him give it a try. He has Acronis Disk Director installed but whenever he starts it up it stalls at the Acronis splash screen until he unplugs the HDD.
     
    Shadowdare, Apr 7, 2011
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  4. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

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    Right click on computer, click manage, select disk management, left click (select) the partition that is not showing and select 'delete'.

    Hope he has the data somewhere else though.

    Good luck.
     
    tilleroftheearth, Apr 7, 2011
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  5. Shadowdare

    Shadowdare Notebook Enthusiast

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    So the problem lies with a broken partition?
     
    Shadowdare, Apr 7, 2011
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  6. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

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    No, the problem lies with turning off the power (accidentally or on purpose) while it was being accessed.

    Btw, what is a WBFS partition?
     
    tilleroftheearth, Apr 7, 2011
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  7. Shadowdare

    Shadowdare Notebook Enthusiast

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    He can't delete a partition or reformat it because it stalls. What should he do now?
     
    Shadowdare, Apr 7, 2011
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  8. ViciousXUSMC

    ViciousXUSMC Master Viking NBR Reviewer

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    Format the whole disk if you can, if wnidows if giving you problems do it outside of windows with fdisk in dos or a linux boot disk and use gparted.
     
    ViciousXUSMC, Apr 7, 2011
    #8