AAAAaaaggggghhhhh!!! I have a 200 GIG external drive USB connected to my computer.
Brand new. I have just downloaded 14 movies I WANTED to watch, to it.
We had an irregular power fluctuation at the house and the computer shut down and rebooted twice or three times.
When it all settled down the external drive was not in the control panel so I exited all programs and safely removed the ext drive with windows safely remove HARDWARE icon. The drive showed up there but not the subdirectory.
After it was safe, I swithed it off let it cool down then reinserted the usb cable and turned the power switch on.
Control panel sees it but when I click on the icon, it comes up with: G: is unaccessable the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

My computer is
AMD Athalon 1500
1 Gig ram
20 Gig C: drive, 80 Gig, D: 200 Gig external
Win Xp service pack 2
Can I get this back to original condition and readable... and how?Well first I would check to see if the external drive can work on another computer.
This will let both you and I know whether it is a problem with your computer or the drive itself.Thanks, I connected it to a computer with Win98 SE. It does not show up in control panel.
I tried different ways of starting it.Power off but connected to USB, USB not connected power off then on then off then on. so on.
No Joy at all.I presume you mean My Computer?

Has the drive worked on the Windows 98 before?Yes my computer sorry late here. No carbon, This is the first time Ive used this other computer. Should I try the dell then?
When I took it off the AMD I used safely remove device and it found the drive AND the subdirectory, which it didnt find b4. I THOUGHT it might have been an improvement, but it wasnt.
Ill set up another computer and see if it works in any of them then.The external drive doesnt register in any of the other computers.
I tried it in the AMD (its original) and it still has the problem unreadable.In the AMD right click My Computer and select Manage then Disk Management...
Right click the drive and select properties and report back what it says.
If it says RAW it was un-plugged prematurely and your data is most likely gone...Thanks patio. Yes it says RAW, the external shows as zero bytes. So bye bye to all those movies then.
The power fluctuation we had at the house is most likely the cause of that then.
probably some twit hitting a power pole nearby.
Patio is the external fried then or can it be made USEABLE again.Bed time for now I'll try again tommorrow Thank you everyone for your input and help.
If the 200 gig external is fried I might source the receipt and try to get a refund or exchange.
Goodnight from Australia.If you cannot format the drive, I would return it and get it replaced.Thanks Carbon, I tried to format the external drive. It went all the way through it and then finished with cant complete or similar so I tried it again and the same result. Cant format drive.
The little green bar guide went all the way to the end and stopped at the very end.

Im going to take it back Monday.

My problem with that though is, I had/have sensitive material on the drive passwords in particular. So Im really hoping the formatting was a success in that regard.
There were 14 movies AVERAGE 900 kb each and some other stuff totalling about 11 Gig of 200 leaving 189Gig empty.
So the formatting, I would think would have erased the beginning of the drive, where all the data would have been.Unless they have the proper tools, I don't think they can do much with the drive.

If you want, you can change your passwords or whatever you had on the drive but I wouldn't worry. The drive is in RAW format and you have tried formatting numerous times.

Carbon, patio thanks for the help. Ive formatted the external drive multiple times now and finally it has successfully completed. I switched the drive off and let it sit for a while then rebooted it and is recognized with system volume information. and a file.
The drive does however only have 189 GIG available but hey it works again.
Once again Many thanksQuote

The drive does however only have 189 GIG available but hey it works again.