Question : Problem: External Hard Drive "does not contain a recognized file system"

Hello,

I had opened this question much earlier with the question "Title: External hard drive crashes Windows Explorer" and received answers, but did not have time to implement them. For background on the problem, please see earlier question/answer thread.

I tried to access the external harddrive using cmd.exe and the reply was:
'The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.'

I would like to know:

1. if there is another way to access the harddrive to recuperate the data it contains.
2. how to reformat the harddrive for further use.

Many thanks for your help,

Farfalle

Answer : Problem: External Hard Drive "does not contain a recognized file system"

You can try getting the data off an "invisible" drive using the following program:

http://runtime.org

You can also try accessing the drive using knoppix:

http://knoppix.net