Maxtor 40gig - Files lost? data is there though?

[chrispols]

Hi there,
I have an external Maxtor 40Gb drive running on a USB2.0/Firewire box. I've been using it to backup and transfer files between my MAC and my PC. Yesterday I couldn't find my data anywhere on the disk apart from some folders that MAC created. I do a properties of the disk, and it states that of the 40gb there, 35Gb is free, with 5Gb used. I do a search on the disk, and amazingly it comes back with 1.25mb of files (created by MAC).
This is wierd, as it says there is data on the disk, but i just can't see it. Also, all that data is damn important! argh! I've been to the Maxtor site, but no joy. I've gotten GetDataBack (runtime.org) and it runs through and I can see all previous files i've deleted, but not the stuff that I want. Any ideas on this conundrum? I've worked with computers all my life, and yet I have never seen something like this.
Thanks a lot,
Chris

 

[mijan]

Sounds like an odd problem, i think the catalogue has been altered, probably needs the likes of a specialist, if you want you data back, but do not write anything to the disk. Try

http://www.computer-recovery.com

they are very good at data recovery.

 

[SYAR2003]

Get PTEDIT32 from powerquest
and check the partition table .
Type could be faulty .
Type 17 i think is regular NTFS .

ftp://ftp.powerquest.com/pub/utilities/

 

[chrispols]

I'm using Getdataback for Fat to recover the data. I'm selecting Fat32 to recover, and it comes back with what looks like only Windows files. On more analaysis of the disk, it's stating 2 types of FAT.. one is FAT32 boot sector, and the other is FAT16-Large?? Thinking that MAC was putting files on FAT16, and windows FAT32 (as those files i'm getting) I've started to recover from the FAT16 part now, and will get the results in 6 more hours. I'll let you know if this comes back with anything.

Thanks
Chris

 

[SYAR2003]

Large fat is fat32 partition type 0C. Fat 16 limits on 2gb.

 

[chrispols]

Hey there. Ok, after quite a few days of using GetDataBack, I managed to restore quite a bit of the data. Here's the kicker. I used the Fat-16 option on GetDataBack to restore the data on a 40Gb disk. I got a lot more information back than when using the FAT-32 option. I tried to format the disk to Fat-32 after getting everything back, but you can't use the whole 40Gb. You have to use NTFS to make use of it. So instead, I partitioned it into 2 x 20Gb. Now both are Fat32, and running fine. However, how the heck did the company I bought this thing off get the whole 40Gb to be read as Fat32? Did they force something on the disk? Could this have caused instability on the table and thus this headache? Thanks a lot,
Chris

 

[SYAR2003]

chrispols:
They're formatted/partitioned with 3'rd party software or a rig ,probably before assembled as a portable drive.
I have an external maxtor also ,a 160GB and its one FAT32 partition.
I tried to have it as NTFS but somehow strange things happend ,so trying to get back to one 160GB FAT32 caused
some experimenting , ended up with partitioning it back
using Partition Magic 8 (witch support USB drives).

I hear somewhere in the forum that FDISK from W98
has a limitation of 60GB , and we know xp has 32GB limitation partitioning FAT32 ,but has no probs with
already partitioned drives at larger sizes.

 

[multarnc]

XP and Win2k both cannot partition Fat32 over 32GB. FDISK also has a 64GB limit on harddrives.
It sounds like the TOC of the filesystem corrupted.