Windows 7: Cant recover HD

I have a 300GB WD VelociRapter, a few years old, I bought to use as my C: drive because of the extra RPM/speed(supposedly). I partitioned it in half and it worked fine until recently it started intermittently getting BootMgr missing errors on startup. After trying and failing to fix the problem directly , I decided to install a different boot drive to fix the problem.

The problem now is I cant get the VelociRapter to mount, Drive Mngr wants to initialize it, the handful of data recovery progs that i have run show no files to recover and the size to be 0.5 kb.

is there any chance of recovering this drive? Thanks for your help.

Not if you can't read any data from it.

Check your connections and try different cables. Try a different power connector (routine tests).

Then try the WD diagnostic program ISO from their website on a bootable CD. It probably will not work on an unreadable drive, but if it were to be something simple it might pick it up.

Good Luck.

MJP808, Welcome to the windows 7 forums. I have had that problem with a machine and I searched and the Seagate and WD utilities did not fix the problem.

I went to grc.com and using the $$ program Spinrite, It solved my problem and I was able to get to the data on the drive. It is not cheap but if your data is important, then I recommend spinrite.

I don't have any financial interest, just a satisfied customer.

Rich

Rich, did you pay $89 - that seems to be the price for a new customer.

Yes, I did pay something like that. don't remember, but it was cheaper than the $1500 that a commercial company wanted to retrieve my clients data. Cheap at half the cost and my client was very grateful and appreciative.

Rich

Thanks for the information.

Looks pretty grim I guess--thanks everybody.

mjp,
don't give up the ship just yet.

Try:

Active@ File-recovery
File recovery - photos,videos,docs - cgsecurity
GRC Hard drive data recovery software
Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download
TestDisk - data,partition, disk recovery software - cgsecurityLet us know the results. Although not free, I'm pleased with Active@ File-Recovery