External Hard drive (doesn't work with Windows 7, does work with PS3)

[danp]

I have a WD 1tb, which I bought over a year ago, since day one I've had it formatted FAT32 so that I can use it with my PS3. Last night I plugged it into my laptop and now my Windows 7 laptop is adamant that I format it. I've tried changing the letter, I have tried disabling and re-enabling, and I have tried turning off the USB it was plugged into and then re-installing that, when I go into disk management it says the hard drive is RAW format, and the properties say 0BYTES both available and used. The irritating thing is that this drive only has 50GB free, and I don't want to lose any of the data. The drive also works on the PS3 still, allowing me complete access to all the files on the drive, I have also tried it on a different Windows 7 laptop and again it wanted to format the drive.

Are their any solutions which wont cause me to lose data? or am I just going to have to be unable to update or retrieve the files on the drive?

 

[catilley1092]

danp, welcome to the forum!

If you have another HDD to backup this drive to, you can use a free backup tool, check out the Free Software Database, select a program, install it, backup the drive, then format it, and reinstall the data to it. Here's a really good one.

https://www.w7forums.com/macrium-reflect-free-t7114.html

Hope this is of help.

Best of Luck,
Cat

 

[TrainableMan]

PS3s use a "customized" partition and encryption, that is likely why you can't read it on a PC.

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/26987609

http://www.xtremeps3.com/2009/01/01/can-i-connect-my-ps3-hard-drive-to-my-pc/

 

[Dmoz]

Hey all, I have the same problem, only I had been using my external hard drive on my laptop, until I plugged it into a PS3 to get some series off of it, and now my laptop recognises the external HD as local disk E: and says it needs to format it in order to use it (which of course I don't, because I have valuable docs on it).
I've already tried having a Mac read it, so that I could take off the files and format the HD, but the Mac also doesn't recognise it. Danp, did you manage to fix the problem with the tip you got from catilley1092? Any recommendations would be much appreciated!

Thanks.