External Hard drive

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Guest

Hi, can anyone help me, I have an external 250gb hard drive whick i have been
using for backing up music and video, its has worked fine until today when i
switched it on i got a message saying do you want to format disc, i cannot
open the external hard drive and it does not appear to be present in my list
of devices, does this mean i have lost all my data or is there any way i can
recover it HELLLLP! please
Al.
 
Hi Al,

What does ot say about the drive in Device Manager?

--
Curt

http://dundats.mvps.org/
http://www.aumha.org/


| Hi, can anyone help me, I have an external 250gb hard drive whick i have
been
| using for backing up music and video, its has worked fine until today when
i
| switched it on i got a message saying do you want to format disc, i cannot
| open the external hard drive and it does not appear to be present in my
list
| of devices, does this mean i have lost all my data or is there any way i
can
| recover it HELLLLP! please
| Al.
 
mirageman said:
Hi, can anyone help me, I have an external 250gb hard drive whick i have been
using for backing up music and video, its has worked fine until today when i
switched it on i got a message saying do you want to format disc, i cannot
open the external hard drive and it does not appear to be present in my list
of devices, does this mean i have lost all my data or is there any way i can
recover it HELLLLP! please
Al.
Click to expand...

Try the external hard drive on another system. If it works, then you
know there is nothing wrong with the hard drive or the enclosure and
must troubleshoot the original computer. At that point, be smart and
burn your data to CD or DVD.

If the hard drive does not work on another system, take it out of the
drive enclosure and attach it to the testbed system internally. If the
drive works now, you know the problem is with the external enclosure. If
the drive doesn't work, you know the drive itself has failed or the
partition table is corrupted. At that point, you're faced with doing
data recovery and your path depends on 1) what is actually wrong with
the drive; 2) the value of your data. You can test the drive's physical
viability - see instructions here:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

Here is some standard data recovery information in case you should need it:

*IMPORTANT* - If there is any question that the drive is at fault - it's
making noises for instance - and the data is crucial DO NOTHING FURTHER
ON THE DRIVE. Every time you spin that drive up you may be destroying
data. If this is the case, send the drive to a professional data
recovery company like Drive Savers (my preference) or Seagate Data
Recovery. General prices run from $500USD on up. Drive Savers recovered
all the data on a failed laptop drive for one of my clients and it cost
$2,700. He thought it was worth the money; only you know what your data
is worth. I understand that some insurance companies are now covering
data recovery charges under "Loss of Intellectual Property" so check
with yours.

Drive Savers - http://www.drivesavers.com
Seagate Data Recovery Services - https://www.seagatedatarecovery.com/

f you think the drive is physically healthy, it may be possible to
retrieve the data by software methods. DO NOTHING FURTHER ON THE DRIVE.
The data is still on the hard drive but if you overwrite it, it will be
extremely difficult or impossible to recover it. If you use data
recovery software, install it on another machine and either use it from
that operating system or create a bootable cd/floppy and work with that.
If you don't have the skill and/or equipment to do these procedures and
the data is crucial, take the machine to a professional computer repair
shop that has experience in doing data recovery. This will not be your
local version of BigStoreUSA. In-shop data recovery is usually not
exactly cheap (for ex., my charges are generally $150-350USD), but it
normally costs less than sending the drive to a company like Drive
Savers. You need to make the determination of the value of your data and
decide what to do.

http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html
PCInspector File Recovery -
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/welcome.htm
Executive Software “Undelete†-
http://www.execsoft.com/undelete/undelete.asp
R-Studio - http://www.r-tt.com/
File Scavenger - http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
Ontrack's EasyRecovery - http://www.ontrack.com/software/


Malke
 
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