Thread: I Am Royally Screwed

I have a 1TB hard drive which has over 700GB of music on it, including all the Vinyl from my collection which I have put into digital format.

I can't access the drive any more. It shows in Windows, but it can't read it and keeps asking me to format the drive before I can use it.

I'm going to have to send it away to get the data recovered. I can't lose it, I just can't.

The hard drive is fine, this only happened when the drive refused to be ejected from Windows 2 days ago, it kept on saying the drive was in use. I unplugged it anyway and now this has happened.

I'm presuming this is an external drive.

It sounds like it may just be a bad sector.

Have you got anything else you can plug it into - say a DVD player or an XBox360?

Originally Posted by dodders

I'm presuming this is an external drive.

It sounds like it may just be a bad sector.

Have you got anything else you can plug it into - say a DVD player or an XBox360?

It will be a bad sector.

I've plugged it into a laptop and another desk top and it's just the same. Windows just says that it needs to format the drive to use it. Yes it is external.

I'm willing to pay to get it recovered because it's so important to me. I can't lose that 700GB of music.

Norton Disk Doctor or Diskdirector

Dont know if an up to date version of Norton Disk Doctor is available, try that and then Diskdirector

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... kdirector/

Originally Posted by Acidman

Norton Disk Doctor?

Disc Doctor isn't available any more. I think they renamed it Utilities, but that doesn't seem as good as disc doctor.

I've tried using the disc repair function in Tuneup Utilities. It starts it's scan and then sys "no disc in drive"????

I'm sure you've done this yourself but i just had a quick scout on t' net. I've seen a couple of similar probs and both recommendations have been to use Active Partition Software. Both problems i read had the same aggro as you - requesting a format and both said that this sorted it out.

http://www.partition-recovery.com/

Available on PB as well. Might be worth a punt...

I will give these a whirl guys and let you know how I get on.

If none of these work, I will just pay what it takes to get the data back, it's that important to me.

Longshot!

Try connecting to a Mac and run an application called Diskwarrior. Two diferent systems but, just might work and will not damage your data


Also

If the disk is external remove the disk and try in a new caddy, could be the circuitry is dead!!

Good luck sorting it..

Great news,

Thanks to the software Dodders gave me a link for, it found all the files on the drive and i'm now copying it all (900gb worth) to another 1TB hard drive. Once that is done, I will reformat the drive I was having the trouble with.

I've purchased the Pro version of the software (cost me about £30, so not bad) and it seems to be doing the job...so far.

Will give an update later when it's done and tested [sweatdrop]

Thanks for the help guys

^^^Happy dayz.

Glad u got it sorted
I did find some recovery software the other day as it goes : http://www.easeus.com/

What one are u using?

Either way, lets hope the recovered files are all fine.

Good luck China. :ympray: A similar thing happened to me once,wasn't 700gb mind you! BB put me on to Data Recovery II,did the job good!

glad you got it sorteddoes any1 back up to dvd disks ?? mind you 900gb is a lot of dvds i supose.

Originally Posted by RenegadeGenius

What one are u using?

I'm using the Pro version of this: http://www.file-recovery.net/

It comes with File Recovery and Partition recovery in one package. So both pieces of software. It's very good and is transferring the data really well. So far so good but I'm going to have to leave it going over night as there is a lot of data to get through. It's been going for a few hours now and it's only transferred around 200gb.

Hey,
from the sounds of it this is your only storage device & there's no backup ? Then you'd probably had your digital life flashing before your eyes already, so take this as a good lesson.... just count the years you've put into it. But yea, dvds are long. I'd recommend buying another 1TB drive, plug it in, spool everything on (like backup every months/quarter/half year) and bring it to a friends house for safe keeping (for physical events like fire/theft ect). Put all your photos & other important documents/data on it too...
Sorry, but I work with computers & data a lot, and in the end, hard drives are electronic devices which are bound to fail sooner or later - so not backing up is just d'uh.
Good luck.
c.

Originally Posted by sandman23

Hey,
from the sounds of it this is your only storage device & there's no backup ? Then you'd probably had your digital life flashing before your eyes already, so take this as a good lesson.... just count the years you've put into it. But yea, dvds are long. I'd recommend buying another 1TB drive, plug it in, spool everything on (like backup every months/quarter/half year) and bring it to a friends house for safe keeping (for physical events like fire/theft ect). Put all your photos & other important documents/data on it too...
Sorry, but I work with computers & data a lot, and in the end, hard drives are electronic devices which are bound to fail sooner or later - so not backing up is just d'uh.
Good luck.
c.

I actually have 4 internal Hard Drives and & 5 External Hard Drives for various things. This Hard Drive which went tits up (although the drive itself is fine and is not failing) was the one I kept my music on and was never touched apart from adding more music once in a while.

I build computers myself and I'm very careful with my stuff. It 's just Windows being an arse and lot letting me eject it which caused the heartache.

Thanks for the advice though

Originally Posted by RenegadeGenius

Glad u got it sorted

Yeah nice one China. I'd be gutted beyond words if I lost all my data! I'd probably cry

So after Three Full days, all 900GB has been safely Transferred to another 1TB Hard Drive. My music (part of my Collection, 700GB worth) is now safe and well.

The offending Hard Drive has been formatted and is working perfectly once again.



It took a long time but I wasn't bothered, as long as everything is safe.

The software I purchased has been a very good investment and if this happens to any of you guys, I would urge you to purchase what I did.

Originally Posted by China-Rising

So after Three Full days, all 900GB has been safely Transferred to another 1TB Hard Drive. My music (part of my Collection, 700GB worth) is now safe and well.

The offending Hard Drive has been formatted and is working perfectly once again.



It took a long time but I wasn't bothered, as long as everything is safe.

The software I purchased has been a very good investment and if this happens to any of you guys, I would urge you to purchase what I did.

3 DAYS!!

Still, glad it all worked out for ya mate.

Originally Posted by dodders

3 DAYS!!

Still, glad it all worked out for ya mate.

Yep, the partition was seriously screwed with a huge amount of bad sectors on the disc. It took all that time to find the files and transfer them all over. At times it was taking about 10 minutes to transfer 1GB. My PC needs a good nights sleep now.

yay, good to hear all was safe in the end!
which reminds me, I need to do a backup round again as well, has been a few months.
definetly can't wait for usb3/next firewire version to be standard.... this is getting ridiculous if it takes 1-2 days to backup everything onto externals...
meh, rant schmant.
c.

Am glad to hear that everything turned out well in the end China! And am glad that you've shared the info on what programs to use to recover your files, should the same happen to anyone else. I have a backup external hard drive which I update every now and then just in case, as I would be devastated at losing my tunes (years worth of rips and downloads). And to think I have only just started using the 'Safely Remove External Drive Function' lately.

And to think I used to just switch my external drive off when I was finished!!!

next time any file/drive on your computer says its still being used, even if it's not, use Unlocker. UNLOCKER 1.9.0 BY CEDRICK 'NITCH' COLLOMB

had problems with a virus before, and in order to get to the problem i had to close some .exe files, Unlocker did the job, and i still use it (like in you case).

btw, i will check out the links that worked for your drive. If you got your hd fixed, maybe there's still hope for my old one.