external Hard Disk help

for some reason when i try to access my external hd, it wont open and says its not formatted. Unfortunately i have data on there that id like to keep. is there a way to recover/undo(the problem) my HD?

it was NTFS
i have tried partition find and mount and it didn't work.

 

it was NTFS? I doubt running check disk would be of help, or accessing via a Linux Live CD. Sounds like you deleted the partition. (Been there, done that ;-( )You could try fixmbr command from the recovery console..., it is on xp installation disks and can be installed as a boot option. There are also many freeware utilities you could try here, probably the best first step. http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads38.html

 

i use XP <.<
im try badcopy now

 

are there more detailed explanations on how to use fixmbr?
it sounds like it is used on hard disks with windows installations on it which my external does not

also how would i find the device_name?

 

I'm not sure you could just delete a partition without using a partition manager.

Have you tried simple things like unplugging the drive and rebooting then plugging it back in?

If you go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>in the left hand panel>Disk Management does the drive show any partitions with a drive letter assigned?

Also in Disk Management you could try Tools>Rescan Disks.

 

I was having some external hard drive problems recently. The drive letter disappeared and subsequently I couldn't see the drives under Windows. However, Norton Partition Magic was able to fix it (add designation letter, label, partition, ...), so I got the data out.

However, I needed Acronis Disk Director Suite (aka Acronis Disk Expert, iirc) to sort them out once empty - Norton PM kept giving me some error messages, but it wouldn't fix them (I think Norton PM v8.05 won't run ChkDsk with /F option enabled to fix them. Acronis put them into Logical NTFS file systems - no errors...

The bad news is neither program is free, but maybe a trial version would do, or maybe you can borrow a copy. Freeware partition programs might work too if the problem is similar to mine.

 

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd224/Friendly_hazard-gpa/problem-1.jpg
thats what properties looks like for me. when i look at my computer it still has E: but im not sure if thats really true. o well ill try norton first then