Help Help Help!! Cant access storage drive anymore 3

[coldskool]

Hello All,
I am using one large hard drive (Western Digital 300GB) and another smaller drive. The smaller drive is the drive I boot from and the large drive I use as storage.
I recently had a hard drive failure (my smaller boot drive) and I went to re-configure the large drive (300GB WD) using the data lifeguard tools that came with the drive and the software was telling me that I would need to format the drive before I would be able to use it again. Is this true? Does anyone know how I can re-install or re-configure the drive so I can have access to my data again? Please help!

Thank You!

 

[Freestone]

Just what do you mean by reconfigure the large drive, and for what purpose? Also, please tell us what operating system you were using on the smaller drive so we know what we are dealing with.

 

[coldskool]

Just what do you mean by reconfigure the large drive, and for what purpose? Also, please tell us what operating system you were using on the smaller drive so we know what we are dealing with."

Let me try this again...

Two days ago my system specs were as follows:
Operating System: WinXP
Boot Drive: Western Digital Serial ATA 36.7 GB (two partitions, OPSYS and APPS)
Storage Drive: Western Digital 300 GB (1 full partition)

Yesterday, my boot drive fails so I throw in a spare 20 GB drive, format it and throw windows 2000 professional on it. I then plug my Storage drive back into the system and windows tell me that the drive needs to be formatted.

So I install the "Lifeguard Data Tools" that come with the 300 GB Storage drive and it too tells me that I need to format and partition the drive before I can use it.

I am beginning to wonder if the partition information or "configuration info" for the 300GB drive was stored on the boot drive and thats why I cant access the files anymore, however I've no idea, need help!

 

[Freestone]

Let me ask if you were using a product called GoBack? If so, try reinstallling it.

But my guess is that your 300GB drive was/is formatted NTFS. If that is the case, the ONLY solution I've seen for the symptoms you describe is a data recovery program. Many users report great success with GetDataBack from

http://www.runtime.org

I know that recovering 300GB data is going to be tough when you are down to a 20GB drive. Hopefully some other forum member has a better solution, but as I said, data recovery is the only solution I've seen to this problem.

 

[coldskool]

Freestone,
Thank you so much for the suggestion, it worked perfectly and I was able to get the 10 or so GIG of data that I needed off the drive, took forever though because it had to scan through all 300 GIGS.

I would definitely pass along the recommendation for GetDataBack from

http://www.runtime.org

to anyone that has run into the same problem as I did. Its really an excellent little program!

Thanks again Freestone!

 

[Freestone]

I'm very happy you were able to get the data you needed, and chalk up another for GetDataBack.

Was my assumption that your drive was formatted NTFS correct?

 

[coldskool]

Everything was all NTFS... Im back up again but now Im purely using the 300GB drive as my boot and storage drive.. this drive's a real hog, takes forever to install/uninstall software on it and I can just imagine how long its going to take to load apps.. The drive I was using (The raptor) had good read/write speed but it only lasted me a little over a year and then dead. I was thinking about getting a scsi drive if I can find one cheap, have any recommendations? Thanks

 

[Freestone]

SCSI and cheap I've not run across, sorry. Perhaps others have? (though I wouldn't hold my breath).

What is the warranty period of Raptor drives? Hopefully not a year.

There is certainly a pattern going on here as far as NTFS formatted drives not being recognized once the primary drive is replaced. I know this problem has appeared many times, but I am unable to provide thread history. I am going to try to keep one now so that hopefully someone can provide an answer to why it occurs, and perhaps better yet, how to cure it without resorting to data recovery.

 

[attrofy]

Most *cheap* scsi drives I have seen quickly become unaffordable once you price out the controller card.

I too am curious as to this unrecoverable phenomenon of the NTFS formated drives. One bit of curiosity would be if these are single partition drives, and if they are compressed NTFS? Either of these being a trend might indicate some sort of OS related hangup. I will be interested in your findings Freestone.

 

[jheine]

By the sound of it, it was not a "Basic" NTFS partition. Ususally, the applications and even Linux rescue disks (such as Knoppix) have no problem reading NTFS partitions if it is a basic partition. The problem arises when you upgrade the drive to a "Dynamic" disk in Windows. I've had so many issues with Dynamic drives and data recovery that I only do it if I have no choice and need to mirror the drive with a software RAID because I can't wait for or afford to get a hardware RAID controller. There is no other reason to use Dynamic drives in Windows. Dynamic drives can only be read by Windows, and they need to be "imported" if you happen to pop the drive into a different system. You will even have problems repartitioning and formating Dynamic drives in anything but Windows. If you want to convert a Dynamic drive back to a basic drive, you need to open Computer Management, delete all partitions on the drive, and then convert to Basic drive. If the Dynamic drive was also the System drive (C, your pretty much screwed unless you import it into another system.

Also, another set of recovery tools, or which I just found and testing now, is TestDisk and PhotoRec, which I found in this review. One recovers the partition table and the other recovers files. They are cross-platform (Dos to Win 2003 Server, OSX, Linux, Solaris, etc.) and source code is available. Oh, and it doesn't cost anything (FOSS).

The Raptors should have a 5 year warranty on them, as they are marketed as an enterprise-class drive. You should have no problem getting an RMA on it.

Jarrett

 

[coldskool]

Thanks for the info guys, but Im actually pretty broke right now and I think I will just stick with the 300GB hog for the time being.
@Jarret - Do you know if I will need to have the receipt in order to send the raptor back?

 

[Freestone]

I never had to supply a receipt to any hard drive manufacture for RMA service. Just a serial number and a diagnostic code, if one is given.

Your warranty support would starrt here:

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/selection.asp?custtype=end

Plug in your serial number and see if warranty is available:

http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/serialinput.asp?custtype=end&requesttype=warranty&lang=en

RMA processing:

http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/rmainfo.asp?custtype=end&lang=en

 

[attrofy]

Good info ther jhine - you get a star. I will look into this and see what more I can find out.

 

[coldskool]

Thanks guys, I just got off the phone with Western Digital and they are sending me a new Raptor, thank god.... this 300GB beast is killing me..