My hard is displaying hard disk failure.I have hooked on to another computer as a second hard drive but it wont open it is prompting me to format it.but i need the data. help

bootable USB guide, here we assume that you are using either Vista or Windows 7 to create a bootable USB.
1. Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to the system and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to format the USB to make it as bootable.

2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.

3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:
DISKPART and hit enter.
LIST DISK and hit enter.
Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no is Disk 1.

4. In this step you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are self explanatory, you can easily guess what these commands do.
SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS
(Format process may take few seconds)
ASSIGN
EXIT
Don't close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.

5. Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use "D" as my optical (DVD) drive letter and "H" as my USB drive letter.

6. Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:
D:CD BOOT and hit enter. Where "D" is your DVD drive letter.
CD BOOT and hit enter to see the below message.
BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 H:
(Where "H" is your USB drive letter)

7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.
You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).
Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16822/boot-from-a-usb-drive-even-if-your-bios-wont-let-you/

boot from a usb drive

hope it helps

hi,
- This means that your operating system may have collapsed and needs repair.
- To repair, enslave your hard drive to another machine by:
- Make sure the second computer has a good operating system.
- Remove the hard disk from your computer.
- Remove CD/DVD Rom from the second computer and fix your hard disk on
that drive.
- Start the computer.It will display that you're running on two drives.[Unix]
- Press F1 to save changes and continue.
- The machine notes one drive needs repair and starts the repair process.
- After it has completed and opened your system, turn it off and remove the
hard disk.
- Fix it on the first machine and start it.
- If this fails,you may need to format the hard disk.


GOOD LUCK!

Open your command prompt and format the drive type format volume [/fs:file-system]

volume: Specifies the mount point, volume name, or drive letter of the drive you want to format.

/fs:file-system: Specifies the file system to use FAT, FAT32, or NTFS Floppy disks can use only the FAT file system.
Example.........FORMAT E: /FS:FAT32.....Press enter. E: is my second drive

If the computer is prompting that the drive needs to be formatted, this means either the drive has become currupt (not likely) or that the drive hasn't been formatted or is an unrecognised format

if the hard drive was formatted on a Mac or Linux machine without choose Fat32 format, the drive will be prompted to be formatted under a windows machine

if there is no information on that drive, i'd suggest just formatting it

remember formatting a hard drive removes all information off that hard drive.

This drive is an IDE drive. The jumpers can be set on it to make it a slave.

Once set as a slave, you can identify the drive letter given to this drive and format it either at a command prompt: C:> format [drive:] /s (to make it bootable) or no /s to just format it.- OR within Windows: right click on the drive letter and select format.

try to format the external HDD using command prompt..... type "cmd" in start & search box and hit enter... command prompt will be opened... Now type "format X:" where X=your external hdd drive letter.... if it does not format then right click on my computer icon> goto manage >select Disk management> select the external drive> right click and delete partition > again right click and select create partition > again right click and select Format drive.....
this will fix the issue....

Then you may have a faulty hard drive, you didn't say why you had to get them, what happened? If your drive is OK? Then perhaps you need to format it first, with say UBCD, here download and burn to CD, and it has tools that will allow you to format and partition. www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Official instructions below.

Turn on you computer, if not already done. Place the Recovery Disk into your CD Drive. Restart the computer with the disk in the drive.
While the computer loads, you will be prompted to "Press any key to boot from disk." Press a key quickly as you are only given a few seconds to do so.
Follow the instructions on the screens to format your hard drive. When prompted to format the partition on your drive or to alter the partitions, select "Format" with the arrow and enter keys. Selecting "Alter" will not recover your computer.
Once the format is complete, you will be prompted to restart your computer. Accept, and while it boots again you will be prompted to "Boot from Disk," as in Step 2. Do not press any buttons this time as you have completed the formatting process already.
Windows will be reinstalled once formatting is complete. Remove the Recovery CD from the disk drive. Replace with the Driver Installation CD. Reinstall all your computers drivers with this CD.

• If you accidentally select the "Alter" option in Step 3, restart your computer using the button beneath the Power button on your computer and follow Step 2 again. Store any files you want to keep on an external media, such as a CD or external hard drive.
• You will lose all saved information on your hard drive, since using the Recovery CD will set your computer back to the factory default. Do not unplug or turn your computer off while the formatting or installation is in progress. Doing so may corrupt your hard drive and might render it unusable.

This could also be a problem with the hard disk. Part of the hard disk is usually used as a virtual memory. If the hard drive is defective, you could experience this kind of failure.
Check your hard disk drive using CHKDSK C: from a command line prompt. Check the outcome of this command. If you find any errors, run the command CHKDSK C: /F to fix the errors. Beware that the second command will prompt you to reboot your computer.

In your new computer go to all programs then to your user guide. Once there open the guide and follow prompts to transfer data from old computer to your new one. Some stuff may have to be reformatted do work with Vista.

How to Format a Hard Disk

After you create the partitions, you must format the partitions:

Restart your computer with the Startup disk in the floppy disk drive.

NOTE: If you are using a Windows 95 Startup disk, a command prompt is displayed and you can skip to step 2. If you are using a Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, or Windows Me Startup disk, select the Start computer without CD-ROM support menu option when the Windows 98 Startup menu is displayed.


2. When a command prompt is displayed, type format c: /s and then press ENTER. This command transfers the system files and should only be used when you format drive C (or your "active" drive). For all other partitions, type format drive: (where drive is the letter of the partition that you want to format).

NOTE: If you receive a "Bad command" or "Bad file name" error message, you may need to extract the Format.com tool to your boot disk. To do this, type the following command at a command prompt, and then press ENTER:

Extract ebd.cab format.com

After the Format.com tool is extracted to your boot disk, type format c: /s t a command prompt to format your active partition, or type format drive: if you want to format a partition that is not your active partition.

3. When you successfully run the Format.com tool, you receive the following message:
WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format?

4. Press Y, and then press ENTER to format drive C.

5. After the format procedure is finished, you receive the following message:
Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?

NOTE: This is an optional feature that you can use to type a name for the drive. You can either type an 11-character name for the drive, or you can leave it blank by pressing ENTER.