Everything on my hard drive got destroyed

May 28 2004

[dennisw]

60 gigabytes. Never had problems with it. Yesterday Windows XP froze a few times. Then the computer refused to boot up again. Boot sector wiped out? I can deal with that! I then installed this drive as a slave and it wasn't recognized... was invisible.

With Partition Magic this hard drive shows up as 60 gig of (exact words) unallocated space. It had 3 partitions which are now all gone.

I used the Western Digital Utilities and the hard drive checks out as being in good shape. No errors.

I was using Norton Anti Virus. Using a firewall on a cable connection.

I don't see any references on internet to hard drives being killed all at once.

The hard drive was 50% backed up.I will consider a data recovery company if the price is reasonable.

[Grig]

If the computer BIOS recognizes the drive then it very likley is not a hardware failure.

Try GetDataBack to recover the data.
http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

[RichardW]

Who backs up anymore? I know we are supposed to but we don't. I like the idea of a second hard drive. They are so cheap nowadays anyway.

[dennisw]

In other words the exact same thing happened to you? You lost everything and for no logical reason. Please note my drive is Western Digital too.

[CyberCowboy777]

Try Knoppix, PQ is not a great recovery tool unless you are using the PTEDIT.EXE (partition table and boot record
editor) to recreate the table.

Never settle for one tool. Where PQ failed, GWSCAN worked or PTEDIT or Knoppix.

[js1138]

I've used this product. It's $49.95 for either NTFS or FAT

There's a free demo that will absolutely tell you whether it will work in your situation and whether you have the knowledge and understanding to use it. The demo is full featured, but will only recover small files.

http://www.data-recovery-software.net/

It's a pain in the butt because once the file allocation table is gone there are multiple ways to interpret the remaining data. However this product and a lot of patience will recover everything that can be recovered.

[antiRepublicrat]

Second that for File Scavenger. OnTrack wouldn't work on a 120GB drive I had, especially since it also had compressed folders on it. File Scavenger gave me everything back.

[CyberCowboy777]

I have recovered three drive over the years with the "freeze" approach. Works both for bad electronics and platter/head issues.

[isom35]

could be the romulans testing a new weapon?

[j_tull]

ERD Commander

[LanPB01]

When mine went down, I contacted a couple of the computer gurus at the university where I work. Neither of them had ever heard of one suddenly saying it was unformatted, and all the material suddenly vanishing. I reformatted it, and now it sometimes makes a funny clicking sound when I start up the computer; one time the computer said it wasn't there, but upon reboot, it found it. I suspect it's shoddy workmanship and a physical problem with Western Digital.

I'm waiting to see what kind of Memorial Day sales are going on this weekend at Best Buy and CompUSA. I'll be looking to pick up a new drive (NOT Western Digital) then.

[kylaka]

If you use FS there are a few things you should know.

1 It will take about an hour to do an 80 gig drive.

2. Don't format the drive, choose the recovery option to recover a defunct volume.You will need the physical volume number, ( 0, 1, 2 & so on) which you can get from administrator tools>disk mamagement.

3. You will need another good drive to recover the files to. You can't recover them to the same volume.

4. When you choose the target drive to write the recovered files to, make sure you check the option to use folder names. It will then recover with the folder, directory, subdirectory names originally assigned, and I think partition too.

In the last 90 days, I have recovered every single file off a 120 Gig drive that blew off the Master File Table (63,000 files) and a 250 Gig for a litttle over 100,000 files. I haven't found a single file missing or corrupted yet. Good luck

[snopercod]

I fixed a drive that "wasn't there" once by:

1. Removing the drive from the computer
2. Removing the controller board from the drive
3. Cleaning the contacts on the pins/socket where the controller mates to the case.

You will need a little teeny torx screwdriver to remove the controller board.

[general_re]

Good old Steven Thrasher. I read somewhere that he actually called Canon to complain that the (non-Canon) third-party service company that leaked the recording was ruining his reputation.

Anyway, as funny as the original is, some devilish soul out there took the Thrasher call and gave it a soundtrack, if you can imagine. Or don't imagine - just listen ;)

[bd476]

Dennis while I have no tech help to offer I'm saying a quick prayer for an inexpensive and speedy solution.

[general_re]

There's a free demo that will absolutely tell you....whether you have the knowledge and understanding to use it.

What, does it come with a multiple-choice exam in the box? Do you activate it by solving a Rubik's Cube or something? ;)

[Peter J. Huss]

Steven Thrasher... I did a google for the fellow but found nothing. Glad to see he got on with his life.

Here's a more hard-core Ode to Mr. Thrasher:

http://stretta.com/~matthew/other/angry/mp3/helpdesk-reremix.mp3

[Veracious Poet]

WesternDigital 60GB harddrives have been crappin' out left & right...I had one start acting funny on me as well.

It seems WesternDigital's is having MAJOR quality problems and are no-longer safe to buy.

Go with Maxtor, they seem 100% better in all regards.

[antiRepublicrat]

For all who have this problem and don't already know, a good procedure is:

#1: DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING! Like the doctors say, first do no harm.

Do not use any utilities that write to the drive, as they could damage it further. If it's your boot disk that's dead, boot with Knoppix to see if it's readable (Knoppix booting won't touch the hard drive). If it is readable (Windows just died, not the file system) you can try your Windows recovery disk or use Knoppix to move the data to its own folder on the hard drive and reinstall Windows without reformatting. If it isn't readable:

#2: Get another hard drive or other storage that can hold the data. For my 120GB hard drive I couldn't afford another drive that big (120 was the biggest available at the time and very expensive) so I pulled it off in chunks to the computer and wrote to DVDs.

#3: Have patience. This is going to take a while.

#4: Get software like File Scavenger ($40) or OnTrack (real expensive) that does read-only recovery of the drive. There is a demo of File Scavenger available to see if it works.

#5: If that doesn't work, decide if your data is worth the several hundred to several thousand dollars pros will charge for recovery. If the data is classified, well, how much you got left on your IMPAC card?

#5: After you're done, reformat the drive and do a sector-by-sector disk check. It should still be good to go if it was just a corrupted MFT that caused the problem.

[antiRepublicrat]

I think it's a physical problem with the drive, and not virus or software related.

I've seen cases where the hard drive's controller died, but often it's just the MFT getting corrupted. It's pretty rare (for me one time in five years of NTFS usage), but it does happen.

[suzyq5558]

Well alrighty then! this poor soul has said everything I dearly wanted to say to tech support but didnt LOL!