Hard Drive has mysteriously changed format overnight, ALL data lost. Please help

Dear Geeks,
I have just been faced with a HUGE problem. Last night I switched on my PC and in the bottom right hand corner, I noticed a pop up informing me that new hardware had been installed on my PC. I checked to see what it was and was informed that it was a new hard drive. After closer inspection I realised that it wasn't a new hard drive at all but my existing F: Drive on which I store all my music, photos and college work.
The puzzling thing was that somehow, it had changed from being called 'ST140803A' to 'QT140803A'. Like my main C: Drive, this is an old Seagate drive.
It's a 40 gig and was practically full to capacity.
When I tried to open it, it wouldn't allow me to and said it wasnt formatted, asking if I'd like to format it now. I clicked 'no' and went to look at the Properties to find that the drive had changed from file system NTFS to something else known as RAW. (see jpg attachment)
This happened once before (again for no apparent reason about a year ago) and I lost EVERYTHING on the drive. If I lost all the data on this disk again I will be absolutely gutted as much of the stuff on there is irreplacable.
I know that its kinda crucial to make back ups of data but when you're talking almost 40 gig of music, thats a lot of 700MB blank discs to buy :-(
Could someone please shed some light on how this may have happened and possible solutions to rectifying the situation?
I dont have any viruses / malware or spyware at the moment. I ran all my AVG Anti Virus, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, SpywareBlaster and Spyware Terminator programs and everything is just fine.
Many thanks in advance; yours in desperation:
Skinno :confused

 

Well the only thing I can tell you at the moment is that a RAW system means the disk is apparently unformatted. I'm working on how to fix this at the moment as I've just had a 80Gb disk do exactly the same as yours - and interestingly also almost full of music files. If I find a cure I'll you know!

 

Thanks Yargwel,
Any (and I mean ANY) information you find will be very much appreciated. As I stated previously, this is the 2nd time this has happened to me now. The last time was my 80 gig hard drive (also full of music). I found no way of retrieving the data and ended up reformatting it. It's now my C: Drive.
To say I am furious that this has happened again is an understatement and to think that Im going to yet again lose all my data is beyond belief.
No one on any forums I have spoke with even seems to know what the problem may be.
Im gutted :-(

 

Look in the BIOS to see how the drive is set up.

 

hi Yargwel / Studiot,
once again, thanks for the replies to my post. Something VERY strange indeed just happened on my PC. I switched off and looked in BIOS as requested. Everything appeared fine, despite the fact that before turning off my PC the drive was still RAW.
I rebooted again and the drive (See attached image) was miraculously back to it's previous state (i.e NTFS and full of all my music files). HOw this happened I do not know as I did nothing at all except reboot my PC. Very strange considering I rebooted it a few times before and it kept saying it was still a RAW drive.
If anyone does manage to get to know how to fix a drive from RAW back to NTFS then please still let me know as I have an odd feeling that it may happen again. After all this is the 2nd time it has happened to me now.
Thanks.
Skinno

 

This may be a great time to back-up that drive, regardless of disc prices!! Who knows, if it happens again, you may not be so lucky!!

 

Stubby,
Yes, you're absolutely right, I agree totally. It's not the money issue with the discs, it's just the thought of the time it would take transferring 40 gig of data onto 40+ discs ( I dont have DVD-R only CD-R) which is precisely why I am currently saving for a 1Tb external hard drive to transfer all my stuff onto there. Speaking of which i have never used one before so any ones to recommend or avoid would be very helpful indeed.
Skinno

 

Well I'm glad you got your data back. I'm still fighting with mine.:guns

 

Sorry to hear that Yargwel,
If you do manage to find a way how to retrieve the data, please forward the info, it would be very helpful for future reference.
Thanks in advance and all the best with your hard drive mate.
Skinno.

 

Yargwel, have you tried GetDataBack to check if it can see the data? It won't fix the problem and the trial won't let you retrieve the data but if it can read it then you know the data is there.

I had the RAW problem once and used some program I can't remember to fix the partition info. It was a 2 second fix but I have no idea the name of the program. I thought it was from Acronis but don't see the option I remember in Disk Director.

The problem itself is a quirk in Windows because just about any program (except Windows) will see the data. It is akin to having your CDROM disappear from My Computer. Not very helpful but it is fixable.