IDE HDD Failure, help needed.

I have a 500gb IDE Western Digital Caviar hard drive that was formatted NTFS with Windows XP Pro sp3. Needless to say, it was full of data.


I briefly unhooked the drive to hook another drive from a different computer so I could test the speed. Then when I plugged the WD HDD back in it shows that it is not formatted and there is nothing on it. Nothing should have happened to the drive. I have no idea why one minute it would be fine, then after taking it out and putting it back in it says it's not formatted.


I could use Data Lifeguard Tools to reformat the drive, but that would erase all the data. I have thousands of valuable pictures (wedding, honeymoon, etc.) on the drive that I really do not want to lose. I would prefer to just have it back to normal, but I suppose if needed I could purchase another 500gb drive to copy the data to. The drive itself is less than a year old and it hasn't been making any funny noises or anything so I really doubt there's anything physically wrong with it. How could it just lose it's format like that??

 

NMIP! How is the drive connected? Is it internal, external? Is it a boot drive (has XP on it) or is it a data drive? Do you still have the other hard drive in the computer?

 

This thread is about the same problem but doesn't have a solution. The OP's data just reappeared after a reboot. Lucky him/her

Like I said then it is fixable. I don't believe it is a partition table problem just a fluke in Windows. Don't consider formatting until you've exhausted other options. Try GetDataBack's trial to see if it can read the drive. It won't let you copy the data but it should verify that it is there. If you know it's there we can explore other options to recover it.

 

The drive is internal, and it is not the boot drive. Like I said, it is an IDE drive with data on it.. And I still have the other three drives in the computer, all of which work perfectly. Currently the drive is hooked to Primary IDE Master, but I have tried it as the slave drive and on the secondary IDE channel as well.


The data is still there, I'm almost certain of it. Nothing has happened that would cause the data to be lost. It seems to have just lost the partition table. I tried some program that was a trial and it was finding data, but it was creating its own names for the files and said the trial would only recover one file.. if I had to guess I would say there's 100,000+ files I need to recover.

 

Can you see the drive in the BIOS?

 

Yep.. I can see it in Windows too. It says " E: Local Disk" and the format is RAW. When I try to access the drive in Windows it says the wrong diskette is in the drive.


I downloaded a program from http://www.easeus.com/ that is supposed to repair partitions. When I run the program it shows the drive, with the old drive name (E: Media) and it says it is formatted NTFS. Which is a good sign.

Right now it is "searching" the drive and it says the estimated time is 8 hours, but it keeps going up.

 

Okay, Data Recovery Wizard found 90,000 some odd files on partition one, but since it's only the demo version it won't let me recover anything without purchasing the program..

 

looks like I am now in the market for another 500gb HDD