I have a Maxtor 260Gb external hard drive, usb 2.0. A couple years ago I had gotten terrible virus on it, one of these things where when trying to play a downloaded video file, I got a message in Windows Media Player saying such and such a codec must be downloaded to play this file. So, like a naive fool I clicked the link in the message thereby downloading the virus to the external hard drive. The obvious result was that in no time at all the files were corrupted and destroyed, and the file system itself was destroyed, causing Windows (XP at that time) to see the disc as 260Gb of unallocated space. Well I was able to use Get Data Back to recover some of the files but most were lost. So I completely reformatted the drive in NTFS and started over with it. It worked for a short while and than one day it was just 260Gb of unallocated space again, no new virus, it just happened again! I was able to recover the files, but they were so corrupt as to be unusable. so this time around I reformatted again in NTFS and used a prgoram to rewrite the MBR and the result was the same, it worked for a while, than, poof, unallocated! The last thing I have tried is using a low level format program to low level format the drive in all 1's and 0's, twice, first time starting with 1's, second time starting with 0's. And the result is the same, unallocated once again. Can anyone please offer some helpful advice as to why this could still be continuing to happen after all these efforts? Is there anything else I can do to try and make this drive work correctly again? I have always been satisfied with Maxtor hard drives before and this one worked very well before all this got started. Any knowlegable help would be most appreciated.
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Can my Ex-HD still be salvaged...?
- Thread starter KosmoLeo
- Start date
Go to Seatools.com (since they now own Maxtor) and download their Sea Tools application to diagnose the Hard drive. See if it can find anything wrong with it.
However, This sounds like the external enclosure has problems, causing the drive to become corrupted. Likely nothing to do with any virus you may have gotten. Just a hardware malfunction.
If the warranty has expired, I'd attempt to remove it from the enclosure, and plug it directly into a working PC, then run Sea Tools again on it. You may find out the drive itself is fine, and you can just go out and buy a new enclosure to put it in.
If the drive is still under warranty, send it back for a replacement.
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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
However, This sounds like the external enclosure has problems, causing the drive to become corrupted. Likely nothing to do with any virus you may have gotten. Just a hardware malfunction.
If the warranty has expired, I'd attempt to remove it from the enclosure, and plug it directly into a working PC, then run Sea Tools again on it. You may find out the drive itself is fine, and you can just go out and buy a new enclosure to put it in.
If the drive is still under warranty, send it back for a replacement.
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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
- Thread starter
- #3
Good idea vacunita! I never considered it might be an enclosure problem. The drive is long off warranty, though very well kept, so I will try the seagate tool, and another enclosure since it would be a cheap investment to save a good $150+ hard drive, and see what kind of results I get with that. I will post the results I get here too.
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