Windows 7: EX HDD not recognized :(

I just bought a 1.5 tb samsung story HDD and figured i would dumb everything from my 320 gb segate ex pro on to it. The seagate has sat in the same place for years with out being moved or anything, it has its own power supply and was plugged into the same port the entire time.

the seagate is not recognized and ive tryed updating drivers through device manager as well as the website (no help from website at all) drivers were up to date
would not allow me to use a perviouse driver

when i click on the drive letter i know it is i get the error : the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable...... now i know this is bad but the drive has never shown any sign of defect and has never been moved at all. I know there are ways to get data off of drives that are bad so i started doing some searching.

Some programs ive tryed are: partition wizard, EASEUS data recovery, pandora recovery, total recall data recovery

now a couple of the programs found the drives and didnt really show that there was anything wrong with the drive. and Total recall found the drive and was able to see everything but you have to pay to retreive your data. free version only alows one gig

Oh and ive also tryed computer managment>storage>disc managment

so i was wondering if anyone could help me with another way that i might not have tryed yet to get the drive to be recognized by my comp or if they know a free program i can use to retive and xfer the data to my story hdd.

Try this program:

Recuva

This almost sounds like a problem getting windows to recognize the drive, rather than the drive being bad. The drive is connected through USB? Suggest removing all USB devices and rebooting PC. Plug in USB mouse and keyboard and confirm they work. Then plug in the HDD and see if windows recognizes a new device. The real test would be to take the external drive to another PC and see if it is recognized by that PC. A Guy

A few alternatives besides unplugging the drive along with any other usb devices for a fresh detection as A Guy recommended would be trying it on a different port and checking the data cable at both ends to make those are all the way in.

Hopefully the partition table MFT is still good on the volume. If you left the factory Fat 32 volume on it and never reformatted that to NTFS that could be the problem. As for free data recovery programs you wouldn't like one came across lately called Dr.Freeware.

That will recovery "everything" from a drive but assign each file a new number instead of name! 168gb of system files meshed with personal files, exe, ogg, dll, and every other file type from the Windows directory along with files in the user account were mixed together in over 1,000 recover_1, recover_2, recover_3, etc. folders.

The one or two programs fouind that would see each in original form wanted you to spend $70 approximate for the full version to recovery anything! The Dr.Freeware(Fedora Linux based) found everything on the drive where a resized primary was turned into unallocated drive but was able to grab everything when booted live off of the cd you first make up. Dr. Freeware - Data Recovery

Mind you this is strictly a "last resort" type of program that can recover from any partition you select or the entire drive when the partition table is toast. Last resort is the key word for it however.

thanks i will def. give it a try

thanks for the sugestions, all my usb are working fine ive tryed the 3 in front as well is 4 in back. ive also tryed 2 other computers one with windows 7 (like mine) and another with xp. all ended up bringing me back to the same point. I tryed updating drivers and all that jazz that goes with plugging in a new drive that i was aware to do. ( i did that for the other 2 computers) The only option for me to update the drive was through device manager since the website is really not user friendly at all or somthing or at least ive found it not to be. (Seagate) i go to it and see the little car icon that says drivers right under it so im like aww thats cute and creative i click on it and it takes me no were except to a buntch of trouble shooting steps that ends with no driver downloads. the gist of what i can remember reading is are hard drives come pre loaded with the software so get it off the drive. some other things ive tryed is different wall sockets just to eliminate that fluxuating or dirty power might be messing with it.

oh and some other info is ive had it hooked up to a sirge protector its whole life.

I cant remember if i reformated the drive when i first got it, i want to say no but from the programs that would show info on the drive, it showed as NTFS. But if your saying that the seagate ex pro came from factory as fat32 then i must have. At the time i got the drive, I was no where close to knowing or understanding anything about computers and related electronix at all. luckly i have some what of an understanding now lol.

Yeah i dont think i would like Dr. freeware lol since the reason i want to get the drive to work is because everything on the drive is organized and i remember it taking like all day haha but hey if it works then i will def. use it! thanks for the link! It kinda sounds like when you say last resort that after using this it will render the drive useless so if all data wasnt retrived or if it couldnt retrive the data then im really out of luck after using this program.

When using Recuva be patient it is a long process usually even when you think it is not doing anything it is working. I accidentally formatted an external 1TB drive and it took me 4 days of 24/7 to get it all back


Steve

The Dr.Freeware will rename literally everything so you would need to sift through files recovered in tons of new folders! It's a bit too awkward and specifically is a last resort when no other data or partition recovery program will work. It's actually easier going through the expense of a professional data recovery service rather then the dentist's office this will put you through!

The one thing you can try is a look in the disk management tool to see if the drive's partition is showing in there. It may have ended up "offline" where you would need to restore use in there by clicking on the left square and reassigning a new drive letter to see Windows will then mount the partition on it as a new logical drive.

The image shows how to turn a drive from being online to offline while you would doing the reverse of turning the drive back online and made available once a drive letter is seen. The three windows in the image direct you into the "Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management" as seen there.

Once you see the drive is online open up a Windows Explorer or Computer Windows after right clicking on the volume to the right of the square to use the add new drive or change drive letter option to see if the volume has been mounted. If the drive is working normally and hasn't failed on you the partition should become available right away.

I will give the new sugestions a shot, im currently in the process of reformating a wd 1tb passport hdd so it can be used with a wii, so as soon as that is dun i will go back to the bump and grind of trying to getback the data on the unrecognized seagate ex pro. thanks for all the sugestions i will be back to let you know if it worked or if i encounter another problem.