Help Please - Maxtor 5000DV data lost

[salazaar]

My computer(Dell PC) recently crashed and I when I attempted to restore the data from my external hard drive (Maxtor 5000DV - firewire) I plugged in the drive and tried to use it as if it were plug and play, at that time I got an error screen and my computer shut down.
Then I remembered that it wasn't pnp and I tried to reinstall this time using the drivers first and it recognized my hard drive. But it recognized it as a brand new hard drive with no data and no format and asked if I wanted to format the drive. Obviously I didn't want to do that because I'm sure all the data is still there I can just no longer access it.
Does anyone have any tips on how I can get my computer to see all my files again.

 

[wileya]

go to

http://www.downloads.com

and do a 'data recovery' search for 'zero assumption'.

it should see all the files on that drive.

if just recovered 525 meg of deleted files with it.
good luck

 

[comtec17]

What OS are you running?

Was the external drive formatted as NTFS or Fat32?

 

[salazaar]

My computer is running Windows XP and the external hard drive was NTFS.

I just tried ZAR I let it run over night and I think it took about 8 hours to scan my whole hard drive. It then had a mile long list of folder but only a few were recognizable most had long alphanumeric titles and when I tried to recover one of my folder with word documents I didn't realize the trial software would not recover the whole folder but only the first folder within the tree so I only got to recover a few documents, which it did correctly, but I did not get to see if it would work with my emails, mpeg, mp3's, jpeg's and programs so I'm still not sure how well it would work for me if at all. And I can't afford the $500 for a disaster recovery specialist.

 

[kshugart]

salazaar
The problem is not your external hard drive, it is the way XP sees the drive from its drivers.

What condition led to the crash of your PC?
Did you restore using the Dell Restore CD? If not, then remove all driver's pertaining to the external HDD, reboot and re install the drivers.

XP is weird sometimes. Install the driver first, reboot, then plug in the device.

Does XP recognize the drive as basic or dynamic? Can you see the drive in Disk Manager? Did you try to import it?

Try these steps, maybe that's all it is.
Let the forum know how the disaster ended as we are all trying to learn, so please, feedback, please!


Klon Shugart
Data Recovery Specialist
CCNA/MCP2K/CDRT
Microsoft Certified Partners

http://www.adv-data.com

 

[salazaar]

Kshugart,

I'm not sure if I know how to do everything you mentioned.

To start though, when I first had the problem I tried my drive on a different computer that it had never been used on before and installed all the drivers fresh. But still when it was connected the computer recognized the hard drive as a blank unformatted disk leading me to believe that the problem somehow rests with the data on the drive.

I can see the disk in device manager but I don't know how to "import it" and I don't know where to check to see if it is being recognized as basic or dynamic.

 

[revlover]

Hi there,

Same thing as Salazaar happened to me. Disk got mysteriously reformatted during driver installation.... With a new thinkpad runnign XP...the 5000DV worked via USB2 without installing maxtor drivers but to get firewire to work it seemed that drivers were needed. What did I do? I installed them with the drive plugged in, rebooted and then HORROR.... the drive has lost its formatting information. Thanks Maxtor and Bill Gates - not!

Am trying ZAR as we speak....fingers crossed