External USB Hard drive. Parameter incorrect/Hanging on formatting

[hyukie]

I bought a 160gb maxtor hdd and an external case for it. Installed everything as usual, then as it appears in my computer it sometimes say either 'incorrect parameters' or 'not formatted, would you like to format it now'? I know the drive works as I tried it inside the tower itself and formatted it then and that worked fine. If I do try to format the drive when it asks if I would like to format it, it hangs about halfway through.

Any ideas what's wrong?

 

[garebo]

Seems to me there is a thread already about this very same issue, but i could be wrong.
Could you give us a bit of info on your pc and your os?
Is the drive formatted fat32 of NTFS?
It could be that the master boot record got messed up. If you dont mind go ahead and reformat it.
On the other hand, did you have the hard drive jumpered as slave in the tower and then put back in the external case as slave? If so then move the jumper to master.




Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[micker377]

I had the same problem with a USB drive (Win XP Pro - Fat 32), finally reformatted it NTFS and it has worked OK for 6 months so far.

 

[Jumi]

I now all of a sudden have this problem on an external HDD, which I have used for about a year and a half so far.

Problem is it has tons of data on, and would prefer not to reformat, if at all possible.

Any ideas?

 

[Jumi]

Sorry, I ommitted the details. I have tried the drive on different computers after this error came up, namely on a
system running W2000 with NTFS and on WXP NTFS.

 

[garebo]

Ideal situation would be for you to have your own thread and hyukie have his own, although this one seems to be abandoned anyway.
I figure you (Jumi) will get better results if you do make your own, separate thread.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips