External Hard Drive Formatting

[TuKewl]

I tried to connect a 2.5" drive externally to my laptop via usb and a window popped up (I'm on Win7) saying;

You need to format the disk in drive E: before you can use it
Do you want to format it?

and my buttons are
"Format disk" and "cancel"

Now disk management doesn't recognize the drive and the drive doesn't pop up in My Computer. I want to try to recover some of the data on this drive (not a new drive, and probably corrupted somehow), but I'm wondering what will happen when I click this format disk button.

I'm afraid that if I click the button it will do a full format. When I click this button will another screen pop up giving me some formatting options?

My goal is to do a quick format and then use recouva to get back the data.

Thanks

 

[tiraides]

Select format disk and the Format Disk tool should come up. (Don't format through the Disk Management program.) Check the box that reads Quick Format (or some variant thereof) and then format the drive. That should minimize the amount of data that was truly erased, and it should give Recuva a greater chance of restoring some (if not all) of your data.

 

[TuKewl]

I can't go through the disk management program regardless because it doesn't recognize the disk. What I'm really trying to get at is if I click the format disk button that another window will pop up to give me formatting options. In your reply you said the format disk tool should come up. I'm hoping someone will know for sure.

 

[tiraides]

I say should because at times, depending on the user, Windows may automatically format the drive instead of giving you options. Because it's been a while since I've had that particular problem, I can't confirm whether or not the Format Disk program will come up in your case.