my first corrupt hard drive.... can someone help?

[chadwick626]

the other day my 6 month old 120gig WD wasnt visible.. i restarted, the drive letter came up but when i tried to get into it it said "drive not accessable something something data is corrupt"
after a day or so of freaking out i read about it a little and tried about 10 different software titles that claimed they could recover the data. the one that got close showed me the subfolders but nothing in the root of the drive which is what im after.
windows xp sp2, i believe it was on a ultra tx2 controller card, not that it would matter i dont think, it was completely random too, noone really uses that computer its purely for storage purposes..... can someone PLEASEEEEE help me?

 

[eyec]

did you try to boot into safe mode and trouble shoot it that way?

plug it into another PC as a slave and try xcopy.

 

[chadwick626]

safe mode makes a difference if its corrupt? i dont have 120 free gb to copy everything to... im trying to pick up a cheap 200 gig or somethin but im sick of messing around with it i think ill jsut redownload em... im torn between reformatting it and putting stuff on it again cuz if i fill it up and it does this again im gonna flip out.

 

[satrow]

Have you tried putting your 120GB on the secondary IDE channel or on a new controller card? The TX2 (or whatever) may be u/s and your data ok - but inaccessible.

Andy.

 

[dbData]

Go to WD's site and download thier diagnostic software before you reuse the drive. And only reuse the drive if passes every test in the program. If it fails, you should be able to return it, your warranty should still be in effect if it's only 6 months old.


Good Luck!
Rick

 

[linuxbuzz]

If the data on the disk is important, what ever you do do not attempt to recover it on your own, as further damage could be caused.
If you decide to do it, then try to clone the data prior to any recovery attempt.
If you have a damaged file, then back it up before you attempt anything.
We had the configuration of our RAID 0 array completely damaged. In addition to bad sector area within one of our drives. The entire data was lost,
I read in this forum about Unirecovery, so we thought of trying them, these guys have proven themselves to be professionals of the highest standard.
so you might as well try them.

 

[chadwick626]

if anyones wondering i jsut reformatted and redownloaded with a vengence. i think i ran that tool from the wd site but im not sure... hopefully i dont have anymore issues with it..

 

[CompGuy007]

You could try freezing it, but not a guarantee it will work.

If you want the data bad, you may have to go with a data recovery company. I've used a couple when my drives died in the past and I recommend

http://www.rewave.com

(ReWave Hard Drive Recovery) because everything is pretty much free until they get your data- and their recover prices are the lowest out there.

Good luck to you.
CompGuy007

 

[linuxbuzz]

If your data is valuable and u want to avoid another disastor.

When I asked unirecovery about the freezing of the head, I was told it was a good idea if the temperature is under strict control, and the disk is left to cool off for a long period of times.

Then they have explained that if the head is frozen and the head's temperature is lower than that of the platters, it could only result in the head being too solid for the platters to handle. Subsequently, you can easily end up with damaging the megnatic data i.e. being lost for good due to scratched platters.

Equally it is said that if the head is left to cool off, the very damaged head could easily have certain particles detached from it, therefore the freezing and cooling off could also cause in the placement debris from the head on the platters which is another disastor.

Please consider the freezing advise very carefully if you dont want to jeopardize the permenant loss of your data. However, if the data is frivolous, it is always worth trying anything!!

 

[KarateLois]

I tried linking to rewave.com and it doesn't seem to be there. Is that the right address?

 

[bithead9]

Once you get the data off or give it up for LOST you can run WD utility to recertify the HDD - that might give you a comfort factor for reusing it...Good luck.