Hard drive seems locked 1

[bonjohno]

Hi I have a 20gb quantum fireball QML20000LD-A which works in the computa & has files which can be accessed but I cannot remove the files or format the drive what do I do to get it back to normal....... thanks

 

[grez]

Can you place the disk in another machine as a slave and and try to extract the files? If you can extract your important stuff, then try to reformat from scratch there. Good luck!

 

[jsauce]

I owuld have asked what operating system you were running it on. Windows XP for instance locks a disk in windows and prevents direct access to files that you are not the owner of and it will not let format the system drive from Windows because of this lock. Its part of the NTFS file system. Of course you you bypass this protection by mounting the drive in another computer that can read NTFS and do it that way as grez suggested.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator