When I have gone to My Computer> Local Disk (F:) - my Maxtor 500GB Basics external hardrive I get a pop up SAYING "The disk in drive F is not formatted. Do you want to format it now? Y/N." All seems legit but could be wrong, could be some malware. I don't want to click yes and have my music & video libary deleted, I would cry. I will run AVG full scan tonight, and the quicker ones tomorrow when I COME back to see what you guys suggest. I can't play files in WMP that I originally could which are on the hardrive. This is the error from WMP;

"You've encountered error message C00D11B1 while using Windows Media Player. The following information might help you troubleshoot the issue.

Cannot play the file

Windows Media Player cannot play the file. You might encounter this error message for one of the following reasons:

Your sound device, such as a sound card or sound controller, requires an updated driver. To determine if an updated driver is available, see Windows Update at the Microsoft Web site, or see the sound device MANUFACTURER's Web site.

Your sound device is not functioning PROPERLY. Try using Device Manager to check the status of your sound device.

  To check the status of your sound device

You do not have a sound device installed on your computer. Install a sound device, and then try to play the file again. For details, see your computer manufacturer's or sound device manufacturer's Web site.

You are trying to play a file on the Internet and the server might be temporarily unavailable or there might be a network issue. Try again later.

You are trying to play an MP3 file that contains compressed ID3 headers. The ID3 header is a portion of the file that stores the song's album information (for example, the song name, artist name, album name, and genre). This information is sometimes called a "tag."

To fix the problem, make a copy of the file and then use a non-Microsoft ID3 tag editing program to remove or reset the file's ID3 headers. After you remove the ID3 headers, Windows Media Player should be able to play the MP3 file.

Attempting to remove ID3 headers might damage the file and make it unplayable. Therefore, always make a copy of the file before you edit it.

If this solution does not resolve the problem, the file might be corrupted."

Any help much appreciated.

Josh

Maxtor has had a rash of bad external drives. Problem being inadequate COOLING and the drives overheat.

Is this a constant problem (or) only pops up after use of the drive?

It looks like the the Partition Tables are gone and it thinks the drive is unpartitioned and unformatted. Likely cause is drive failure and not a virus, since I virus would take out the MBR on all drives if that type of issue.

If this is not a constant issue and only pops up after a certian period of use, I would copy your data off of that drive to another location. If a constant disk read issue where it wants to reformat, you may need to use a hard drive data recovery package to recover, and depending on how bad the data loss is you may have a total loss unless you can afford the $1000+ of a professional data recovery center.

I use this tool for blown drives that still spin up... http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm