well, during a recent format of my wifes pc, I some how scred up the mbr on her external, usb drive..has ALL of our importnat data on it, and now when I plug it into a pc, it shows up in Device manager, but I cant see it in explorer, either the USB drive, or any files on it..I know and hope the files are still there, but how can I fix the mbr on a hard drive that is not showing itself in explorer??

This sux big time!!

thanks all..


wase4711

So sorry to hear this. :(

I know back when I had my 486 33mhz system, the complete system was shipped new OEM to me with the Michel Angelo virus. The company sent me a floppy that had software to format just the MBR and left the rest untouched.

I'm sure you will recover access to the data, you might need to ask the HD company. Keep us posted.

You could try booting to WinERD 2003 and recovering the partition using a 3rd party app. Got to say though that i had the same problem not long ago and ended up with a single 113GB file that i couldnt do anything with :(

well, I got the data back, but now I still have the problem of making the drive "useable"..How can I format a USB Drive that does NOT show up in Explorer?
Its therre in my Device manager, but I cannot see it in My Computer or Explorer..If I can format it, I can use it again..

thanks for your help..If ANYONE can help me, the great folks here are my best hope...

You did not say if it was XP or Win2k....but if it is XP right click my computer and choose "Manage" and then "Storage" and look around in there and see what you can do. You may have to assign it a drive letter.
Good Luck.....I can hear the wife now fussing

Thanks
Dudelive

Start, Run, -> "diskmgmt.msc "
Look in the lower window, and see if you find it.
You might have to "import" it.

Try the bootcd from Acronis Partition Expert and see if it finds the drive to format it...

I usually take the ide drive out of the usb adaptor and install it in my desktop and either use my recovery program or simply restore the drive using the manufacturers software or whatever is my favorte at the time.

I accidentally reformatted my external 160GB USB drive a couple months ago and had not difficulties recovering ALL the data, but I put it on an IDE channel to redo the formatting.

Used to have problems with drives I had set up as dynamic. Have you tried Admin tools...Computer management...Disk management. Know you can usually do something with the drives in 2K and XP from there.

Sure glad to hear you got all your/her data back. B)