Hard disk failure. Help!

[rayjayy]

Hey guys so I have an external 500gb WD drive, which i stupidly left plugged into the computer when i upgraded from 7077 to 7100. Now, when i plug it in, the computer detects the drive, but is incapable of accessing it. It also prompts me to format the drive before it can be used.

I have a lifetime of data in there and I really wish I do not have to do a reformat to get it back. Anyone can shed some light?

 

[Night Hawk]

You likely left the factory exFat partition on it where you need to get the auto run file going to bring up the installer agiain since you are running a new installation of 7 there. One fast way for getting rid of that type of problem you can perform later once all files are backed up is simply reformatting it to NTFS.

With the serial number inhand go to the support site and download the zip for that model. You may need to see that unpacked to the drive by simply plugging it into an XP machine where the auto run and access to the drive will be seen. On the other machine you can then unpack the files onto the drive to replace the installer.

Which model do you have there? I went with the 500gb MyBook Essential and ran into a problem like that but had a ubuntu live cd plus dual boot of XP with Vista to see that corrected. While booted live with the distro the unpacked files can then be copied directly to the drive. Once plugged in after Windows is loaded the auto run will then see the installer appear afterwards.

 

[YupYup]

Something similar happened to me in one of the earlier builds, turns out the partition table was corrupt. I used Active@ Partition Recovery to restore.

 

[Night Hawk]

The main problem is not seeing the menu appear without necessarily being a bad PT. You may have the auto play settings off where the action is set to none or view files on media rather then allowing softwares to install. 7 nows sees a different setup there where you can look that over and then try replugging the drive in again following a restart of the system there.

Other the tool there or unpacking the replacement software will be needed. I doubt the partition was trashed simply by leaving it plugged in however since I've already done that a few times here before finally removing the drive from the casing and installing it internally for extra drive. CarltonBale.com » Western Digital My Book - Opening the Case - Removing the Drive

 

[rayjayy]

This is my hard disk:
Specifications for the Elements Desktop (3.5") USB hard drive.

And Activ@Partition gives a weird error when i tried to run it on windows 7. further assistance required desperately. thanks to both of you for your help so far.

 

[Night Hawk]

You didn't happen to see any failure to locate drivers error did you? The same remedy might help you out there besides using a live cd or data recovery where you can later reformat it to NTFS and always be readily available. Installation failure because Windows Vista fails to locate drivers for an external hard drive

 

[rayjayy]

i fired up active partition recovery, and lo and behold, the files in my drive are seen to exist. however, the multitude of options confuse me. theres this PBS, CBS, boot sector thing that i cant wrap my head around. do you guys know what i should choose?

 

[Pogi]

I have a lifetime of data in there and I really wish I do not have to do a reformat to get it back. Anyone can shed some light?

I know how you feel. I have an internal 1TB Samsung HD103UJ containing drivers, photos, ISOs etc which I previously accesssed on a Windows 7 build 1077 x64 OS. After removing the HDD I've experienced the same problem as yours. And I really want to be careful not do anything to compromise the recovery.

You likely left the factory exFat partition on it where you need to get the auto run file going to bring up the installer agiain since you are running a new installation of 7 there. One fast way for getting rid of that type of problem you can perform later once all files are backed up is simply reformatting it to NTFS.

Do you think it's an MBR thing, and reinstalling MBR via UBCD4WIN or Windows 2000 install CD will fix it?

 

[YupYup]

i fired up active partition recovery, and lo and behold, the files in my drive are seen to exist. however, the multitude of options confuse me. theres this PBS, CBS, boot sector thing that i cant wrap my head around. do you guys know what i should choose?

As it says if the pbs and cbs do not match or are blank you need to copy from one that is valid. if it says the cbs looks valid then choose the option to copy that to the pbs, If both pbs and cbs are not valid then choose the option to copy the template into both the pbs and cbs. All three should match as indicated in the picture, the pic is from a fat32 drive but that does not matter. Once that is done click recover.

 

[Night Hawk]

i fired up active partition recovery, and lo and behold, the files in my drive are seen to exist. however, the multitude of options confuse me. theres this PBS, CBS, boot sector thing that i cant wrap my head around. do you guys know what i should choose?

As I was explaining before once you reinstalled Winodws the original software installation was lost probably after you may have knocked out one or more of the software files on the drive itself. You also need to set the auto play options to run so the installer menu will come up when you plug the drive in.

 

[rayjayy]

So I did a SuperScan with Active@ Partition Recovery on the disk, and when I tried to recover the drive, I get an error that says: Partition overlaps with other partition(s)



Attached above is a screenshot of what I have, and the troubleshoot information for that error message. So right now, if I have interpreted correctly, I am to execute the Delete Invalid Partition command upon the one pointed with the red arrow, then attempt to recover the one pointed with the green arrow? Please shed some light, for I fear something apocalyptic happens. Thanks for everyone's help so far.

 

[Night Hawk]

You should be able to readily tell what partitions are on the drive in the Disk Management tool. You may as well as plan a data recovery option to save the files from the drive and reformat it to NTFS where you will no longer run into this type problem. You may as well plan that rather then lose your shirt when the drive ends up needing to reformatted anyways.

WD and other companies make the recommendation for Windows users to reformat to NTFS if they won't be going back and forth with Mac which the software is compatible with as well as Windows. Once reformatted or a new partition is on and you go to plug the drive while booted in Windows whether on XP, Vista, or 7 the new hardware found and drivers are now being installed messages will be seen.

XP automatically sees the auto play prompting there while still seeing a new drive letter added. Each time you may see a different drve letter however.

 

[rayjayy]

Yeah Nighthawk I get what you mean; but I hope you understand that my main priority right now is to recover all the data from existing yet inaccessible partition, and as such, will not do a reformat.

It would be best if anyone can give me advice on what to do next on Active@ Partition Recovery with the above screenshot and details.

Thanks!

 

[Night Hawk]

"Deleted or lost files can usually be recovered from failed or formatted drives and partitions, CD-ROMs and memory cards using the free/libre software available in the Ubuntu repositories. The data is recoverable because the information is not immediately removed from the disk. Follow these steps to recover lost data. This guides applies to Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10 and 8.04." 8.10, 9.04 can also be added as well as a live Knoppix dvd. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

Like I suggested before you can copy and paste files and entire folders from any MS drive even the external one you have there while booted in a live distro like ubuntu. Knoppix is also user friendly for this as well as several even free data recovery programs. You can install a live ubuntu distro to a usb flash drive and boot from that as well to see your files copied over to a temp folder(s) until you can reformat or convert the exiting partition to NTFS. Use Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows Computer :: the How-To Geek

The MS article for seeing Fat16 or 32 converted to NTFS can be seen at How to convert a FAT16 volume or a FAT32 volume to an NTFS file system in Windows XP

For a good review on data recovery programs in general, Data Recovery Review – the best data recovery software reviews. Free data recovery software download!

You have a good seletion of options to consider besides the Acronis program there. The preference is simply booting up in a live distro for ready access to rather troublesome partitions ordinarily unavailable in Windows for copy+paste since the live cd will provide excellent access to all drives.

 

[YupYup]

So I did a SuperScan with Active@ Partition Recovery on the disk, and when I tried to recover the drive, I get an error that says: Partition overlaps with other partition(s)

View attachment 8960

Attached above is a screenshot of what I have, and the troubleshoot information for that error message. So right now, if I have interpreted correctly, I am to execute the Delete Invalid Partition command upon the one pointed with the red arrow, then attempt to recover the one pointed with the green arrow? Please shed some light, for I fear something apocalyptic happens. Thanks for everyone's help so far.

Have you tried just a quick scan? and was the boot sector OK?. As for your screenshot i would interpret that as you would need to delete the other invalid partitions not RJ's Megadisk.

 

[Night Hawk]

Have you tried just a quick scan? and was the boot sector OK?. As for your screenshot i would interpret that as you would need to delete the other invalid partitions not RJ's Megadisk.

The boot sector on the internal drive has nothing to do with not being able to access an external usb hard drive. For some reason the WD installer isn't coming up as it should when the drive is first detected on any fresh installation of Windows.

This was another reason for suggesting the use of a live distro after downloading the replacement software and unpacking the zip file's contents first and then copyng those over to the usb drive while booted live. That includes the autorun.inf which may have been deleted somehow of the drive itself.

 

[rayjayy]

Yup downloaded and did the boot with ubuntu without making changes thing and I could access the disk.

Main problem now is to get something big enough to backup my stuff before formatting it.

Thanks for all your help

 

[Night Hawk]

That's one good thing for the other guy's OS there when you run into a real headache. Once you have everything backed up get rid of that factory Fat crap and put a good ole reliable NTFS partition on yourself!