Urgent help!Windows Vista Home Premium showing external drive empty

Ari94 · May 30, 2013

Hi,

Today when I connected my Buffalo USB 1 and clicked on the Icon from My Computer it opened but showed empty. Though if I click its Icon it shows used and empty space. I wonder why I am unable to view the external drive contents?
As I do got its utility CD I was thinking what if I re-install but I am afraid doing so will delete data on External Hard drive. I am also attaching screen shot.

So far I faced no problem using any external hard drive could it be due to new 2 TB Transcend External drive?

Please advice and oblige.

Thank you.

Additional information:
1. 2 TB Transcend USB 2 External hard drive recently bought.
2. Two USB 2 Buffalo External Hard drives
3. One (300 GB may be)USB 1 Buffalo External Hard drive

I got all utility CDs for above Drives.

wither 3 · May 31, 2013

If you go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management, is the drive shown? Is it online? if you right click on it and select Explore, does it show the files?

Ari94 · May 31, 2013

wither 3 said:
If you go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management, is the drive shown? Is it online? if you right click on it and select Explore, does it show the files?

Yes and that is why I had added screen shots. Once again I dragged and dropped from the uploaded one. There are four screen shots.

Thank you for reply.

Ari94 · May 31, 2013

Could you see my attached four screen shots?

Thank you

richc46 · May 31, 2013

Sorry, there are no screen shots.

Ari94 · May 31, 2013

richc46 said:
Sorry, there are no screen shots.

Trying again.

Once again I try, hope this time it will work. Thank you.

wither 3 · May 31, 2013

From the amount of used space, it looks like the drive may or may not have been formatted and nothing has been written to it yet. I don't know what you're expecting to see on it.

Ari94 · Jun 1, 2013

wither 3 said:
From the amount of used space, it looks like the drive may or may not have been formatted and nothing has been written to it yet. I don't know what you're expecting to see on it.

I can not open files on computer from the external drive. Even the chk files can not be opened that is why I used another software to confirm if folders are there or not and the software checked the folder size and showing chk files.

Hope you will know what I am expecting.

wither 3 · Jun 1, 2013

Have you tried writing files to it and then opening them? For instance, copy a .doc file to it. Can you see it and open it?

Ari94 · Jun 1, 2013

wither 3 said:
Have you tried writing files to it and then opening them? For instance, copy a .doc file to it. Can you see it and open it?

As I can not open them or even see them on computer when I click the Icon of external drive in My computer therefore, can not do anything and that is why need help. How could I do that?

wither 3 · Jun 1, 2013

I'm really confused. If it's shown as online in administrative tools and you can see the files using Explore, you should be able to see the drive in Windows Explorer and copy files to it. I guess you're saying the drive is not shown in Windows Explorer.

Ari94 · Jun 2, 2013

wither 3 said:
I'm really confused. If it's shown as online in administrative tools and you can see the files using Explore, you should be able to see the drive in Windows Explorer and copy files to it. I guess you're saying the drive is not shown in Windows Explorer.

I wish you should have read my posts, sorry if my posting made you confused. Once again I will explain:
I connect my external hard drive via usb with computer, go to my computer click on the external hard drive Icon and when it is open it shows nothing, no data.

When I put cursor on the external hard drive Icon or use Disk Management it shows used and un used disk space.

As I had no choice to make it confirm if there is any data on the external drive I used a third party software which only check folder size, it showed folder 000 and folder 001 with chk extension.

Now, question is, when I can not open external drive documents or chk files what should I do? how could I get back my data? Is it possible by some how I could copy the external drive on an other drive or on computer? If so then how? Is there any free or commercial software which can help me to convert chk files to original ones such as: pdf, doc, txt, rar, zip, wav, mp3 etc?

Hope now you will be able to know what I want or what I have been saying. Once again sorry for making you confused.

Thank you for your time.

wither 3 · Jun 2, 2013

Sorry you had to restate everything.

Something I overlooked is-

In the Disk Management screenshot there is a 3 Gb volume. What is it since it doesn't have a drive designation. If you click on it and then right click and select "Change Drive Letter...............", can you assign a letter to it?

I can't read Japanese.

I also don't know what you mean by "How do I get back my data..........". As far as I know, you're working with a bare drive that you can't write to or read from.

Ari94 · Jun 2, 2013

wither 3 said:
Sorry you had to restate everything.

Something I overlooked is-

In the Disk Management screenshot there is a 3 Gb volume. What is it since it doesn't have a drive designation. If you click on it and then right click and select "Change Drive Letter...............", can you assign a letter to it?

I can't read Japanese.

I also don't know what you mean by "How do I get back my data..........". As far as I know, you're working with a bare drive that you can't write to or read from.

--------------------------1

1. If you look at the screen shot there is a letter "H" for the external drive. As there is already "H" letter assigned to it I did not think to change because I also got other 3 external drives. Should I try changing to new letter???
2. I can guess you do not read Japanese no problem.
3. How do I get back my data means on the external drive there is a data, which some how can not open and got chk files. I want to know if those chk files showing data Folder Found 000 4.23 GB and Folder Found 001 1.95 GB can that be converted to its Doc/Text/Pdf/Wav/Mp3 etc etc?

Hope above information give you some answers. Thank you for your help.

wither 3 · Jun 2, 2013

I don't think the H drive is the external drive we're talking about. If it is, there's something wrong. It only shows a capacity of 234 Gb and I think you said your external drive is 2 Tb. I don't think the fact that it says it's FAT 32 has anything to do with it.

In addition, I think you said you have other drives attached by USB. Where are they?

If you to Device Manager, Universal Serial Bus Controllers, how many USB Mass Storage Devices are listed? Are they any problems indicated by an exclamation point?

I don't know how the .chk files were generated. They could be just Chkdsk files. Since you can't write to the drive, I don't know why you would think these are personal files that you need to recover.

Ari94 · Jun 2, 2013

wither 3 said:
I don't think the H drive is the external drive we're talking about. If it is, there's something wrong. It only shows a capacity of 234 Gb and I think you said your external drive is 2 Tb. I don't think the fact that it says it's FAT 32 has anything to do with it.

In addition, I think you said you have other drives attached by USB. Where are they?

If you to Device Manager, Universal Serial Bus Controllers, how many USB Mass Storage Devices are listed? Are they any problems indicated by an exclamation point?

I don't know how the .chk files were generated. They could be just Chkdsk files. Since you can't write to the drive, I don't know why you would think these are personal files that you need to recover.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Text copied from my first question
"Additional information:
1. 2 TB Transcend USB 2 External hard drive recently bought.
2. Two USB 2 Buffalo External Hard drives
3. One (300 GB may be)USB 1 Buffalo External Hard drive"

No.3 is the one giving me problem.

I do not keep plugging external drives if I am not using.

Thank you.

wither 3 · Jun 2, 2013

This site describes what a .chk file is and why they are created. It also offers a little software program that will identify the correct extension for the .chk files- FileCHK Free Download. If you install it on your boot drive, I don't know if you can point it to the H:. Use it at your own risk.

As I noted before, Windows is reporting the disk size as 234 Gb and the missing space isn't accounted for by the .chk files.
Since, there couldn't be any personal files on that drive, I would format it to NTFS to see if that fixes the problem.

Ari94 · Jun 2, 2013

wither 3 said:
This site describes what a .chk file is and why they are created. It also offers a little software program that will identify the correct extension for the .chk files- FileCHK Free Download. If you install it on your boot drive, I don't know if you can point it to the H:. Use it at your own risk.

As I noted before, Windows is reporting the disk size as 234 Gb and the missing space isn't accounted for by the .chk files.
Since, there couldn't be any personal files on that drive, I would format it to NTFS to see if that fixes the problem.

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Thank you very much for your help and cooperation. I will download that software FileCHK and see how it works.

Urgent help!Windows Vista Home Premium showing external drive empty

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