External hard drive problem.

[O]

I have an Iogear 80 gig USB external hard drive partitioned to three, fat32, drives, G, H, and I.
Computers will recognize H and I drives. All computers, I have tried an XP, Vista and Windows 7 OP system, say G drive needs to be formatted.
I have tried to format the drive and it always fails.
My intent was to format the drive then use a file retrevial software to get the files I need. Unfortunately that software will not work unless the drive is formatted.
I really ned to retrieve some files from that drive.
Any suggestions?

 

[Chaz]

I have had success with Runtime software's GetDataBack.
http://www.runtime.org/

It scans for any previous partitions as part of the recovery process.

 

[O]

I have had success with Runtime software's GetDataBack.
http://www.runtime.org/

It scans for any previous partitions as part of the recovery process.

Do you know of any free software that will work? I've tried Recuva and Easeus and neither worked.

 

[Chaz]

No I have used a few different programs with good results but they all cost about $100.

 

[O]

I downloaded GetDataBack and am running it. It's nice that they allow you to run it and see if it works before you buy it.
Right now it's just reading errors. I'll post back what happens. This could take a while.