Lost access to a USB external harddrive.

[tbtcust]

Hi all,

I have an external usb harddrive assigned as D:\ drive. I formatted the drive on my Windows 2000 Professional box one year ago and have been using it for while now.

All of sudden I can't access the drive I looked that the external harddrive under disk management and notice that the file system is blank.

I recall making a change to the drive about two months back. I change the sharing from "Share this folder" to "Do not share this folder"

Would anyone please tell me how I can recover/access the drive without losing the data?

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[erikhertzel]

I may be wrong, but I think the drive may have a problem. Have you tried it on another computer to see if the data is there...I would guess that it isn't.

The sharing thing shouldn't have anything to do with a file system being empty or nonexistant. I would have to say I think that it isn't a 2000 problem, but a drive problem, either the controller or the drive itself. You may want to remove the drive from the USB device and plug it in directly into the PC and see if you can see it then.

Hope this helps,

Erik

 

[tbtcust]

erikhertzel,

I tried another PC and got the same results. I'm not sure I can disassemble the drive. It's in a permit case. Any other thoughts?

 

[erikhertzel]

I had a similiar problem just a couple of weeks ago...

Well, make sure you can't get into the drive (most of the them have screws somewhere that you can unscrew and disasemble the drive from the USB device.

You may have a controller problem and if you need to get the data off of the physical HD, you will need to get it out of the USB case.

Maybe someone else has some other thoughts...???

Hope this helps,

Erik

 

[tbtcust]

OK, I see how this device disassembles. Once it's out of the case how would I get to the data. I'm thinking the USB connection is part of the control and case.

How do I plug the drive directly into my PC?

 

[jimp56]

easiest thing to do would be to remove any custom connectors on the back of the drive (connectors on back of this drive should look like the back of your main boot drive) and then just disconnect your cdrom drive, and connect this second drive with the same cables. the drive should then show up fine on your computer. once done, just plug cdrom back in as normal.

 

[tbtcust]

jimp56,

finally got up the never to do this. i did as you instructed and was able to hook things up and got the same results. Any other thoughts?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[tbtcust]

According to my local tech guy at the PC repair shop, the HDD is fried. He wants 500 bucks to recover the data.

Can someone recommend a data recovery do-it your self software solution?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[tbtcust]

Hi all.

I got this problem fix.

I purchased recovery software from stompsoft.com called "Recover Lost Data". The cost was 39 bucks and the software found all the data on the damaged drive and moved it to another without a problem.

 

[Fiora]

I agree with tbt103. Go out to CNET or some other download place and download trial software. If the software looks like it is going to work for you, then you pay for it to use it.

There are many different kinds of recovery software. Research and pick one that you like.