Portable Hard Drive Crash - Any Hope??

[str8n2thepink]

Seems like a lot of tech savy individuals on here so thought I'd try.

Had a laptop hard drive a buddy gave me - picked up a little case for it and it worked great as a portable storage device. I used it to keep all this wonderful forum has to offer along with all the other trouble I came across.

Plugged it in the other day and it came up as "drive is not accessible, file and or directory is corrupted and unreadable"

Am I screwed or is there hope to get my vids and pics back?? Any advise would be appreciated!

[spence]

you can buy sofware that syas it can save corrupted and delted files but i found they only work if a section of the drive is damages physically or just been corrupted and dont work when the whole drive has gone .

this happened to me a few weeks ago,this was an internal ide drive,took it out,re installed windows on a new one and then bought a caddy for this one hoping i could salvage something.

i tried a program but it didnt find anything on the drive at all so was a waste of time and i took it back,when i plugged the usb lead in on this drive i had put in a caddy the folders like documents,pictures and various folders i had named and put pics n vids in would be there but i couldnt get anything to open,when i plugged it in it would take ages to open,and navigating the folders would take for ever.

try moving the files onto your main computer,or at least what you can save,try this at normal startup or go into safe mode and try it that way,but if nothing works or moves then i am afraid you may have lost the lot.

only thing you can do is re format and see if it works again,had an external one that did this and i managed to move some uncorrupted files then re formatted it and its now working fine.

[franklynxxx]

Jolting a running hard drive just as tilting a pinball machine is a big no no,
now you know why. This is the reason I personally stay away from any
portable device which is not completely solid state such as flash memory.

Windows NTFS (New Technology File System) which replaces
the simpler less robust FAT32 ( File Allocation Table) has built
in redundancy for fault recovery. CHKDSK is a simple utility to
rewrite the MFT ( Master File Table ) from the backup copy
written on the drive. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/176646
Click Start > run and paste in this command , CHKDSK D: /F
substitute your portable drive's letter seen in " My Computer " for D
( /F means fix ), if no success, try
Start > run > CHKDSK D: /R
( /R means repair )
Some portion may remain unaccessible but it's a start,
once you're in, if the drive exhibits any more ' issues ',
other data recovery tools can be employed.
The above is explained in the Help and Support files
of Windows , just type CHKDSK in - Search - and read.


A little googling always helps, I found this tutorial ( READ ALL of it first )
http://icrontic.com/articles/advanced_data_recovery
for using TestDisk utility available here
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Used to repair the MFT ( master file table) if it's damaged.
This is a data drive only and is not bootable, so Boot Sector
and MBR ( master boot record ) references do not apply.

DiskInvestigator is an application that allows you to view the
contents as either text file names or in machine code at the
sector level. It is not suitable for large scale recovery of files
and only intended as a minimalist ( swiss army knife ) repair tool
for knowledgeable users.
http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/dskinv.html

.

[safn1949]

I read through what you wrote as far as flash drives,the only problem I have is I have found a 16 Gig flash drive and that's not really large enough for what I need.Does anyone know of larger drives?

[franklynxxx]

- I meant USB flash thumbdrives, my needs are modest.
Bulk storage is still very much the province of disk drives,
large server " farms " have raid ( for mirrored backup )
and all the drives can be hot swapped from their housing
in the computer cabinet. If you need to transfer a drive
this is for me the preferrred way. The convenience of a
USB portable drive is a gimmick. The only real need it fills
is securing data so that it is not readily available, and the
unique circumstance of not otherwise having network access,
which can provide for all your remote usage requirements
with much less bother.

.

[tabbi]

I have run into a similar problem with an external hard drive, only mine will not power up. It has an external power supply, and when I flip the switch on, nothing happens. I'm thinking of taking it to a repair shop so see if they can fix it, or at least transfer my files from this one to another. I hate doing this, because I have all my photos and videos on there from Iraq, as well as my porn videos. Nothing illegal, could could be embarrassing, but I'll have to suck it to save those photos.

Lesson Learned: Keep your porn separate from your other stuff!

[safn1949]

So today my external hard drive will not show up in my computer,it shows being powered up(the light is on). 2 questions,can I get it cranked up somehow and if not how do I destroy the info on the drive.The reason for question #2 is that it may be under warranty and I'm real fussy about my information,nothing illegal or anything like that,I'm just private.

[greyhound]

So today my external hard drive will not show up in my computer,it shows being powered up(the light is on). 2 questions,can I get it cranked up somehow and if not how do I destroy the info on the drive.The reason for question #2 is that it may be under warranty and I'm real fussy about my information,nothing illegal or anything like that,I'm just private.

Has your PC registered an USB device, but the drive is not shown, or...?

[safn1949]

It tries to install the drive, shows a failure to install the drive and it doesn't show up in my computer. I just use it to download my torrents and then when they are done I move them to the laptop so if it's toasted I don't really care,I just don't want to turn it in for warranty and have someone manage to boot it and look at all of my stuff.

And on another note,how large of a flash drive do they make?And is there a better external hard drive,ie tougher then the cheap one I have,thanks all.

[spence]

well you could try turning it on and feeling the plug and transformer are not too hot,its a long shot but some do fail and this will turn the light on but maybe not power up the actual drive.

try another usb lead too just in case.

if its still the same try re formatting the hard drive,will wipe everything from the drive then.