WD Disk read error Lost data?

[mangosbajitos]

Hi, I have a 320GB WD hard drive. About 5 days ago, I was attempting to check the properties of my DVD drive in windows and selected the hard drives properties instead. Dont see why this would be a problem but as soon as it was selected, the computer restarted. As soon as it started back up I saw the Disk Read Error, Cntrl Alt Del to restart. Nothing works. I went into the bios, the hard drive is sometimes recognized and sometimes not. I checked and changed IDE cables, Ive tried to install the HD on another PC, nothing. I always try to do everything myself, but I even took it to best buy and a tech said the drive was the problem. Windows will not load at all, not even the option to go in in safe mode. Ive tried to boot from CD with the XP disk inside to reformat. But the hard drive only shows 20300 MB of space?? What could be wrong, all the space is no being read. I had the disk partitioned into 180 and 140 I beleive and in the main one was windows and in the 2nd was all my beloved possetions. I need to know if there is any possible way to recover my data. Appreciate any help!

Thank You!!

 

[wolluf]

Download WD diagnostic from their website and run it against drive. It should give you status of drive - and possibly offer to repair it.

Depending how far gone drive is - a data recovery app like getdataback may allow you to retrieve some/all of the data (you'll obviously need another drive with enough space to store the recovered data). But if its too far gone for recovery apps to be able to access it, you'd need an expensive data recovery agency to retrieve your data.

 

[mangosbajitos]

I recovered some of my lost data. I have some pictures that were recovered but now when I try to open them I get: No preview available, are they damaged? Or is there another way to view them?

Thanks

 

[wolluf]

Recovered how? Using data recovery app? Some of the recovered items may be incomplete (ie, finds a file header, but most of the actual file was stored on damaged sector(s)).

 

[mangosbajitos]

Exaclty what I think happened because the files are too small, or I think they are, about 50KB a file. They have the names for example of a picture file: Image(10), but theres nothing inside. I used getdataback for NTFS. Looks like im out of luck though, the drive still shows 20GB, though I think the info I was able to pull out of it might had came out of the rest of the drive, not the 20GB that it says it has.

 

[Enkrypted]

Not to put you on the chopping block...but this is a perfect example of why backups are important. I hate to hear when anyone loses files due to drive failures of any kind...but backup backup backup...that can't be stressed enough. I hope you are able to find your files somewhere

Enkrypted
A+

 

[mangosbajitos]

Yea its true. I actually did a reformat about 2 weeks prior to this happening and had all my info on one partition and reformatted only the other. I normally back all my data up, but never lost any so I was careless. I used to have a 40GB and a 60GB that I used for that purpose, just to keep stuff backed up but they died not long ago. Got a bunch of empty 8.5GB dvds I should've used, but sht happens. Now I learn from it and yall better too!!