I have a western digital 1 Tb my book(about90%full) that was connected to my PC(running xp) through firewire. Yesterday, when cleaning up and moving some files around, it became really slow to bring up file details or even access the file. I did a couple of power cycles, which didn't seem to help, as I got a few I/O errors when trying to access the drive. Now I dont know why but I thought it may be a problem with the 1394 port and tried to use a usb 2.0 port, As soon as I powered it back on the found new hardware wizard popped up, I did yes this time only, but in the end failed installation, after that I noticed that the drive letter changed from My book O: to local disk K:. At this point no matter how I have it plugged in the drive letter is k:. However, when I plug it into fire wire it says the drive is not accessible, when I plug it into usb 2.0 it ask me if I would like to format the drive. I do not want to format and lose every thing as I have some school projects saved there. is there any way to access the drive without formatting? also sorry for the lengthy story.
Do a scandisk with the box to fix errors checked. That should fix your problem. All the abnormal shutdowns probably corrupted some of the files on the drive, the scandisk will usually fix this problem. A symptom of corruption is if your drive shows up as "raw", and asks to be formatted. If the scandisk doesn't work, do a chkdsk x: /f (x= drive letter of external), this is the same as a scandisk but done through the command prompt. If that doesn't fix it, the free testdisk has more powerful tools to recover lost partitions, it can also recover files from a corrupt drive. All your data on your drive is still recoverable, any corruption is usually very minor but will make the drive unusable.
Alright first thanks for the advice. Now so far scan disk did absolutely nothing, check disk turned up "the type of the file system is raw." and currently test disk says that it has 1 p Fat32 LBA partition that test disk is currently trying to rebuild. which may take a while seeing as it's 1tb in size. at the moment I'm a little confused that check disk says its raw and test disk says its fat32 I'm not sure which to believe at the moment.
FAT32 at 1tb in size would suggest that was what the drive was formatted as,seems strange to be using such an old file system as fat was common for data corruption issues not that it's what's happened to you in this case, i've had the same thing happen where a drive went stupid while being read or written too,when disconnection like that happens the file table gets corrupted sometimes making the partition unreadable if check disk can't fix it the only option is data recovery software then a full reformat after data retrieved if any
test disk just finished with its attempt to rebuild and it came up with this, "cant find cluster size". Now the analysis menu states partition read error and upon trying to go into the advance menu it states that there is no partition available. I'm not really sure what's going on or what to do now. any suggestions on what to do next or what data recovery software to use.
Attempt the data recovery with test disk tools that make up the software,if that fails you could try getdataback,sadly it's not free & quite expensive however you can get a free copy with a key,due to forum rules i can't say where from,then again you could get the latest testdisk beta software from p2p http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
alright I made a slight oversight when using test disk. When I chose the drive I didn't notice that it was misreading the file size, it's currently showing the drive at only 512 b. I don't know if that changes anything and I'm not quite sure what to do now.
You'll need to read the help file on how to recover data using the tools that are incorporated with test disk one of the data recovery tools is called photorec or use getdataback to see if there's anything recoverable at all if nothing shows up then all is lost
Well I believe my last chance was getbackdata, but after seeing the drive details I believe its safe to assume that all the data on the drive is gone. Well I guess I will just have to reformat, unless you guys can think of any other ideas that can help. I thank you for all the suggestions
format the disk and use get databack to recover your data, thats what i did when I accidentally formatted my 500gb drive, got everything back perfect
OK new problem. I'm not sure if this should go under a new post, but, the drive wont format. I've tried formatting by right clicking in my computer, and it fails. Local disk K: wont even show up under disk management, instead where disk k: should be it just says "disk 9, basic, online". The only other way I can think of possible formatting is to hook it up through sata and format during a windows installation. I'm not even sure if that will work, as every program I've used says it only has 512 bytes. any ideas.
That's a weird one,see if the disk needs to be re initialised,by right clicking the left column in disk management where drive letters are,apart from deleting any partitions that it may show in the faulty disk then yep your only other option apart from attempting a reformat with testdisk (if that options there)then placing the disk in a computer may be the only other solution
Well I finally got around to trying to hook it up through sata and ran into the same problem. The drive is registering that it only has 512 bytes. At the moment I'm at a loss. Do you think a data recovery center could possible do anything? or is the drive gone?
You could try a data recovery center other than that & assuming the drive is unformattible then yep the drive is gone & will need be sent back to wd
