Windows Trying to Format/Erase Disks

[Wendy]

For the past few days, each time I connect a disk through the usb Windows 7 tries to format and erase everything that is on it. This has happened with regular disk drives and a flash drive. I have to be very careful and catch this and close the Windows message of what it wants to do. After about five seconds the disk opens normally showing the files. But this windows message to format it doesn’t go away.

Does anyone have an idea as to why this is suddenly happening and how to stop it? I’m afraid I won’t catch it one time or accidentally hit enter and I’ll lose my whole disk.

[Rustys]

Is it just one that it is having issues with and or any that you have tried?

It is usually caused by a corrupt file system, removed improperly, starting to die…

First thing I would do is make a copy of the data off that drive.

Try different ports.

Open an Administrator Command Prompt and type

chkdsk : /f/r

See of that corrects it.

Or you can just copy the data to some place temporary and see if formatting it corrects it. Check to make sure that it does not still happen then transfer the data back.

[jmarket]

As well as the above
Can you try the drive on another computer and see if has the same error.

Have you tried another usb port?? if so have a read here.

Fix You Need to Format the Disk Before You Can Use It With Ease ..but not recommending the tool to download.

[Wendy]

Thank you. I’ll try the suggestions. I suppose this can be marked resolved.

[jmarket]

As per Rustys advice above this problem can be caused by a corrupted file system on the drive, although it is odd that it’s happening with more than one drive?

Should you try the above suggestions and still have issues you can try copying your data from one of the external drives to somewhere safe and then reformat the external drive, copy the data back to the drive and try again. If this works then repeat for all affected drives.

Will mark as solved as per your request, should you still have issues after trying all the above then PM a staff member who can reopen it.