can't access my secondary hard drive

[Heart Break Kid]

ok - i know this isnt a mac question - but i didnt know who else to turn to

im running windows xp on my dell - its got 2 hard drives and the second one is my media drive. i store all my home movies and mp3s on it so my powerbook is freed up for apps

a few days ago i was getting a pop up that said "write error" when i let kazzaa download large files. i had 12 gigs of free space left on the drive so it wasnt like i was running out of space. then yesterday - all of a sudden i couldnt access the drive.

it was visible in MY COMPUTER - but when i double clicked on it it would give me an error or freeze the window

when i double click on it i get a message that says do i want to format the drive - yes or no?

if i format it i lose all my data!!!!!

also my desktop has slowed down a substantial ammount

i have no idea whats going on and i need to fix it! I have home movies stored on it - and they are very very important -

the second i retrieve them im moving all my files to my new lacie 250 gb fire wire drive thats going to be hooked up to my mac.

i cant deal with this bs anymore from my dell

please help

[applemacdude]

i know this isnt a mac question - but i didnt know who else to turn to

uh...a windows forum...but we can help (not me though)

help me get a mac

[solvs]

I won't start with the "back-up all data" thing.

Have you tried pulling it and putting it into the FW case. And/or running a disk checker program (and anti-virus). I have Norton running on my PC right now (it is slow!!!) and it seems to be pretty good.

If you're running Kazaa...

[solvs]

Originally posted by applemacdude
get a mac

That would've been my next suggestion. Can you use a PC formated drive as a secondary or external drive without formatting it (and with full access)? I know you can with a floppy and OS 9.

[Heart Break Kid]

jeez ppl

read the entire thing!

i own a 17" Al Book

lol

cmon! - lets get past the get a mac suggestions

i own a $4000 mac thank you

[rainman::|:|]

yes plug it into the powerbook, it's a good starting point. there could be many things wrong with it on the windows side :(

Have you let scandisk run on it? Tried running it manually?

there's always data recovery labs... but that's a worst-case scenario. Which is good, because it's impossibly expensive.

pnw

[solvs]

There was only one comment made, I repeated it because it was funny, though I know it didn't help much. I did make several suggestions that should have worked had you tried them. If not, you may have a serious problem, like hard drive failure. Instead of the comment you made, you could have said you already tried that. Or that you were going to. Don't mean to sound cross, but with the WWDC coming up, most people here won't take the time to do tech support for XP (sorry, but this is an Apple-related site, and you could've gotten lost in the shuffle).

So, give us an update.

[Heart Break Kid]

i said screw it

i formated the drive

from now on im storing all my digital copies of home movies on my lacie hard drive hooked to my 17" albook