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Seagate HDD issues

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by fifboxer

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I have a Seagate USB hard drive that I cannot access anymore.

Details:

I use system commander 9 to manage my OS's, but all I have is XP on the computer as of right now. My primary drive in the laptop has a C and D partition, C is the main XP that I use and D is my other version of XP that I use for gaming. The USB hard drive is not partitioned and contains nothing but drivers and data from work.

I left the computer on all night, and when I got up this morning, I restarted it, and when it came up to SYstem Commander, I got a message that said certain disks could not be accessed. The computer restarted, and I entered into my normal XP OS. When I tried to open my USB drive, I got a message that said Disk is not formatted, Format Now? Upon further investigation, it seems that somehow, my USB drive was formatted to match that of my primary disk. There are two partitions on my primary disk, a 46 Gig and a 10 gig, and now there is two partitions on my usb, a 46 and a 10. The USB drive is 160 Gig.

I do not understand how the USB drive could automatically format itself, overnight.

Is it possible that there is something corrupt in the USB drive? Could system commander have some play in that? How can I recover the data? I do not think the drive is bad, per say, but rather something is preventing Windows from seeing it properly.

4 replies

by oh smeg

Any External HDD shouldn't be left running all the time as they get Hot and cause the Electronics in the Enclosure and on the HDD to fail.

When a HDD fails you need to take it to a Data Recovery House to recover your Data the last time that I had to do this it cost 46K AU to get the Data Back. Here the Data Recovery Houses charge a fee for the quote to recover your Data the last time that I looked it was $900.00 AU for the Quote and if you decide to go ahead with the recovery the fee comes off the cost of the Recovery.

Now as to your problem I think you'll find that the 2 listed Partitions are the Actual Partition and something like 8 MEG which holds the Map for the Main Partition. With USB Drives most people fail to use the Safely Remove Option & just unplug the drive which results in the Loss of Partition information on the drive. You need to use Specialist Data Recovery Software to recover the Data and even then there is no Guarantee that you will get it all or even if you pickup all the files that they will not be corrupt and unusable.

When you start any Data Recovery Program you need to save the Output to a Different HDD to prevent any possibility of [b]Overwriting[/b] the Data that you are attempting to recover. Now there are 2 types of Data Recovery Software the most common is the type that recovers Data off a running Drive and may require you to Format the Drive so it can examine it and do it's thing. This is the cheaper option and generally quite effective but it has limits.

The second less common type of Data Recovery Software rebuilds the Partition Tables on the HDD. This is much faster and works well provided that the HDD actually works but the down side it [b]It's Expensive.[/b]

To give you some idea of what is currently available in Data Recovery Software look below for a partial list of Software URL's to give you the products Details.

Here is a short list of the better ones

http://tinyurl.com/273ay5

http://tinyurl.com/rmvrv

http://tinyurl.com/yvrsl

http://tinyurl.com/yyk8cm

http://tinyurl.com/382vm

http://tinyurl.com/ynwnel

http://tinyurl.com/nc4kx

http://tinyurl.com/2wox7l

http://tinyurl.com/374d8b

http://tinyurl.com/djw6u

http://tinyurl.com/f73se

http://tinyurl.com/8bd3f

http://tinyurl.com/afu2j

While the last 2 are from the same company they are very different products. Win Hex should only be considered foe use by someone who knows Hex Inside Out while Davory is a great cheap General Purpose Application.

Personally I prefer the On Track Option but it's anything but cheap. However because I use this type of software a lot it's paid for itself many times over by now, for a cheaper option Spin Rite from Gibson Research or Stella have both very good reputations by other TR members.

Col

by fifboxer

I have purchased the Stella recovery software, and was able to find and recover the files. I am still not sure how this happened, but I assume somehow the file system was corrupted. I have tried to use the safe removal, but it never works, however, I usually turn off the computer before I unplug, but you never know.

Thanks to you all for the help,
Get yourself a vegemite sandwhich on me Col.

Thnx.

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