Format hard disk

When I plug in my 1tb WD HDD, it shows the following message…

“You need to format this disk before you can use it” and options “Format disk” and “Cancel”…

I need to back up my data before I format… how can we do that… is this a common issue with WD HDDs ???

Hi

I don’t like to tell bad news but when you have that message windows will not allow you to use the drive unless you format it.

Something I can recommend to try ( but I don’t guarantee it ) is to download TestDisk to see if the drive has bad sectors or data corruption.-

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thanks a lot… I did that check disk and that was showing no errors after all… so there is no other way by which i can recover the data ??? :frowning:

There are some free data recovery softwares online, I would recommend to search for information and see which one would be better for you. I don’t recommend a specific one because I haven’t had to do that so far.-

You might try the DISKDRILL.app

It worked for me in recovering files from the external 1TB WD Drive