Disk Drive suddenly losing NTFS format and becoming RAW device.

  • Thread starter Thread starter calvin_b
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calvin_b

Win 2K, SP4 + all updates
Pentium 1.3Ghz
200Gb Maxtor on slave position on Primary ATA channel

Yesterday this 200 GB drive was operating perfectly after installation
3 months ago. Upon booting up and trying to access it I get the
following Dialog Box 'The disk in drive D is not formatted. Do you want
to format it now Y/N?' So far I have declined, as there was 100GB of
data on there. Device Manager says the disk is working normally. I
cannot run CHKDSK against it.

Has anyone got any ideas on what I can do to avoid a format and data
loss? I just cannot believe that 100GB of data just disappeared. There
is always some indication of disk failure.

TIA

Calvin
 
calvin_b said:
Win 2K, SP4 + all updates
Pentium 1.3Ghz
200Gb Maxtor on slave position on Primary ATA channel

Yesterday this 200 GB drive was operating perfectly after installation
3 months ago. Upon booting up and trying to access it I get the
following Dialog Box 'The disk in drive D is not formatted. Do you want
to format it now Y/N?' So far I have declined, as there was 100GB of
data on there. Device Manager says the disk is working normally. I
cannot run CHKDSK against it.

Has anyone got any ideas on what I can do to avoid a format and data
loss? I just cannot believe that 100GB of data just disappeared. There
is always some indication of disk failure.

TIA

Calvin
Click to expand...

Hard drives can fail at any time, anywhere and without any
prior notice. There are many potential causes. What does the
diagnostics from the HD's maker say? Checked the wiring and
connections? Considered removing the HD and putting it in an
external drive container in an attempt to salvage the data?
Finally, remember that data loss can be minimized by doing
regular backups.
 
Hi,

If you have a linux partition you can try to mount the disk on linux
partition, some time back I faced the similar problem, I was not able
to see the data from windows but I was able to see it from Linux, so I
did mounted it in Linux and recovered a backup of my data and then
formatted the Disk. Now its working fine. You too can try this hope it
will resolve your problem.
Ram
 
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