USB hard disk data gone!

[axilleas]

Hi

I have a 600GB USB external hard disk Maxtor.I was transferring data from a usb pen to that hard disk when suddenly an error message appears " The disk is corrupted or unreadable"
I execute in DOS chkdsk /f: command but then all data(music , pictures where gone...!),
I tried some sotware for data recovery with no luck(easyrecovery, recover my data).

Any idea ,any help will be most appreciated

Regards

Axilleas

 

[vacunita]

Make sure, that Show Hidden Folders is checked in folder options, and check to see if you can find folders with names like dir000x.chk where x is a number.

Usually windows will try to put recovered files from the chkdsk process in those folders.

If there's nothing there, try the evaluation version of GetdataBack from runtime.org.

See if it can find any f your files. It won;t recover them unless you buy it, but at least you'll know if its possible or not.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[TheLad]

As well as GetDataBack, you can try the demo version of Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery. Although it is a demo version and won't let you recover anything, it will allow you to see the content of the drive when Windows Explorer won't.

You can get Stellar from

http://www.download.com

--------------------------------------
"Insert funny comment in here!"
--------------------------------------

 

[goombawaho]

You could create a BartPE CD and boot from that and then use the A43 file management utility (basically windows explorer) and see if you can see anything on the drive WITHOUT involving your Windows OS (thus bypassing any issues WITHIN Windows).

You MUST plug your USB external devices (any of them) in and power them on BEFORE booting with the BartPE disk or else they won't be seen.

You could also open a command prompt and run a chkdsk X: /F where X is the drive letter of your external drive.

Again, the reason I suggest this is to bypass any problems within windows and get a 2nd opinion on whether files can be seen on the drive.

 

[PROFESSORSPARKIE]

I have been having similar problems with USB flash drives, discussed in other forums. There seems to be a valid drive integrity problem in removable drives so I am scared of relying on them.

I set up a Windows command ".bat" file to "xcopy /D " everything that has changed since the last check and copy them to a backup folder on my hard drive. Basically it is a merge of the latest copy of updated files to the hard drive backup, then I set up a Desktop icon to run this program when ever I click on it. I could make it run on power up or at certain times I just havent yet.

Example:

c:\mybat\USB_BACKUP.BAT

runs

xcopy /y /D /S I:\*.* c:\USB_BACKUP\*.*

where

"c:\mybat\USB_BACKUP.BAT" is a batch file that contains

that contains the command where

"xcopy" is a Windows command
"/Y" request an "OK" response to each
file overlay
"/D" requests copy only if the file is newer
"/S? requests the copy continue through
the sub directories
"I:\*.*" is the source device & folder
"c:\USB_BACKUP\*.*" is the destination device & folder

To create a Windows Icon to run the batch request, go to START-PROGRAMS-ACCESSORIES-COMMAND_PROMPT and right click creating a shortcut. SELECT the shortcut and drag it to the DESK TOP. Then right click on the short cut and select Properties and do the following. Select to change the icon and pick one from the browse window. then go to the window selection option and select max/min(your choice). On the top line where it shows that it will execute the program cmd.exe place the following

(a space)/c"c:\mybat\USB_BACKUP.BAT"

the (a space) above is a single space seperating the command from the /c parameter.

When this icon is clicked it will run cmd.exe which will execute the command c:\mybat\USB_BACKUP.BAT

Create a batch file using any editor(not word processor) with the single "xcopy" command described above. I tried to be as explicid as possible with out writing a book.

Test out thoroughly on test data before using on production data.

Computer thought: I teach a lot of programming so I can learn. You can never learn it all.

 

[PROFESSORSPARKIE]

I was just trying to consider how a drive could all of a sudden become corrupted. Consider the following scenario.

Windows system uses/supports different file system structures depending on the OS. Example XP supports FAT(file allocation

table) & NTFS(NT file system) but Win/ME only supports the FAT and many/most USB drives are formatted in FAT.

I suppose that if a Win/XP system(which supports both), had an error it could do it's recovery in NTFS format code so that if an error on a FAT device were not checked carefully the could recover from the FAT file system using NTFS format code,

corrupting the file structure. That is how development code gets caught. Someone(you) runs into a situation that was not tested correctly in code testing/development.


Computer thought: I teach a lot of programming so I can learn. You can never learn it all.