External USB Drive Not Recognized!!!

Somehow I messed-up my external USB drive when attempting to restore a backup image. Now as soon as I plug it in, Windows says it needs to be formatted. The drive does not appear in My Computer (I may have deleted the partition)!

The drive itself was not damaged and seems to be okay physically. I have all of my backup images on this drive so I really need your advice/help to (hopefully) remedy my screw-up.

TS

PS. Other USB devices are detected just fine, so the problem isn't with Windows/Drivers.

 

Don´t format the disk.

Does Windows Disk Manager show the disk? How does it appear?

 

Hi Robin,

No, the USB drive is not seen by Win7's disk/partition manager. As soon as I plug the USB drive into the USB port a balloon pops up above the tray area and says "USB Device Not Recognized".

TS

PS. To confirm that the problem is with the USB external drive I just plugged it into my wifes PC and I get the very same pop-up!

 

Update: I just powered my USB hard drive off, then powered it back on, and now Windows disk management sees it as a Raw (Health Primary) Partition!

TS

 

Maybe this helps
http://www.easeus.com/resource/restore-raw-disk.htm

 

TS,

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=2084654#post2084654

 

Thanks for the link. The good news is that the free version of their recommended app, EASEUS Data Recovery, sees and is presently attempting to recover files from my USB drive. The bad news is that the free version only recovers up to 1GB.

TS

 

After reading the referenced thread it seems that TestDisk and Photorec have been used with success by some members. I guess I'll give them a go after EaseUS Data Recovery finishes up.

TS

 

Whoa, TestDisk worked like a champ resurrecting my USB HD from the dead - what a fantastic program!

 

That's good to hear. Did it report what the problem was?

 

No MudCrab, nowhere that I could see. TestDisk recognized the USB drive and prompted me to do a Search. That revealed it as having been an NTFS format and asked if I wanted to recreate (Write) that format back. I did that and after rebooting my system (as TestDisk advised) the USB drive was resurrected.

TS