Hi,
I have taken a 3.5 Seagate hard drive out of my Dell and put it into a USB Caddy. All is well except when I connect it, my computer asks me to re-format the hard drive which I don't want to do as I want to access the data on it. Is there a way I can bypass this auto re-format process to gain access to my data ?

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

I would put it back in the Dell and see if you can still read the data. The drive may be corrupt and that may be why it thinks it needs to be formatted.

Is it asking you to "re"-format? Or just to format?

The terms "re-format" and "format" mean the same end result. Through formatting, the drive information areas are marked as available for use. The information is still really there (until it's overwritten), but the first charactor is listed as a * until new information overwrites it.

Originally Posted by Digerati

I would put it back in the Dell and see if you can still read the data. The drive may be corrupt and that may be why it thinks it needs to be formatted.

Is it asking you to "re"-format? Or just to format?

Hi,
Its asking to re-format. The reason i have the drive out of the desktop is because i got the "blue screen of death" - Hoping that its the the hard drive thats gone, plan A was to put the drive in a caddy and recover the data. I don't want to reformat the drive as I don't want to lose the data.

Pan B is to add the drive as a second drive on an older machine - only challenge will be the drive's are different re cables. But I may get the same thing ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...........

The terms "re-format" and "format" mean the same end result.

I asked what the prompt said because "re" suggests the system recognizes it was previously formatted. And that could mean the drive (boot sector actually) could be repaired, maybe saving the data, rather than formatting and losing all.

And reformat and format do not necessarily lead to the same end result. If a drive never has been formatted before, or if "full format" is selected, the format process lays downs track and sectors across the whole drive. If the drive has been formatted before, a reformat could be a "quick-format", which just blanks out boot sector and MFT data, but does not actually touch the rest of the disk, and more importantly, it does not test for or mark any bad sectors. Quick format only works on a drive that has been formatted before. Dan is right, however, that a reformat does not delete any previously stored data.

The reason i have the drive out of the desktop is because i got the "blue screen of death" - Hoping that its the the hard drive thats gone

A bad drive does not normally cause a BSOD. BSODs are typically caused a bad driver.

plan A was to put the drive in a caddy and recover the data.

Good plan.

Pan B is to add the drive as a second drive on an older machine - only challenge will be the drive's are different re cables.

What do you mean by different? Is one EIDE and the other SATA? That would definitely be a problem if the older system is not setup for SATA.