External Hard Drive No Longer Readable

[captainfearles]

Recently i viewed my EXT3 formatted external hard drive on my Windows 10 PC, as i have many times in the past using ext2fsd, i also tried disk internals linux reader and ext2fsd.

Now when i connect the drive back to my Foxsat HDR 320GB box, i get an error message, ''Cannot read USB device. The suppported file systems are ext3 and fat32. Please format the USB device''.

However when i view the drive via Windows all files are present and accessible.

Anyone know why the drive is unreadable by the Humax and not by my PC?, and what i can do to resolve?

Some precious stuff on there, and not all backed up!

 

[Black Hole]

Anyone know why the drive is unreadable by the Humax and not by my PC?

Windows has corrupted it. Regardless of ext2fsd, it is my strong recommendation that you only use Linux for this kind of thing.

what i can do to resolve?

Don't know. It might be a case of some flag or other that just needs resetting (maybe the partition format ID in the MBR), but I have not investigated. Investigation would be best done using Linux.

Some precious stuff on there, and not all backed up!

Backing up isn't a problem surely, you can still read the drive with Windows.

Having backed it up, connect it the the Foxsat and format it. Then you can use a Live Linux boot on the PC and copy the backups back to the drive (running a Live Linux from DVD or USB still gives you access to the local Windows files).

 

[captainfearles]

Thank you very much for your prompt and comprehensive reply, i will get cracking.