wcolwell88
asked on
Hard Drive not formatted error
I have a Seagate 160 GB External Hard Drive that I've been using for about 2 years or so. Recently, I ran into a problem accessing it. When I turn it on, Windows assigns it a letter and I can see it under My Computer like normal, but then when I click on it, it says the drive is not formatted and asks me if I want to format it. I assume reformatting it would erase all of the information I have on it so I didn't do it. I tried plugging it into a different usb port and using a different usb cable. I'm using a desktop computer with Windows XP.
I downloaded a program called Test Disk which is made to find damaged partitions and read the drive. The harddrive has no partitions though, its just one big drive. I had the program display the list of files on the drive and all the folders and files appear to still be on the hard drive. The TestDisk program also came with a data recovery program. I started using it to recover the files, it estimated about 16 hours to move the files. After about 1 hr 40 min., I stopped it. It had recovered 366 files, all music files except for 2, but when I looked at the folder it was putting the files in, all the file names had been changed to f########. This wouldn't really be that big of a deal for my pictures, but I also have a lot of audio samples and things in there that are useless without the names.
I think I know what caused the problem. I usually turn off the hard drive when I'm done with it and I didn't know that I'm supposed to click the little button in the bottom right of the screen before turning off the drive. I found the problem at Seagate's help site:
http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...p?p_faqid=2526
It tells what can cause the problem, and what to do to keep it from happening again, but it does not tell how to fix it. I'm basically looking for a program that will read the hard drive and allow me to copy all the files and folders to a different hard drive without losing the names and folders. I don't really wanna spend a lot of money for this, but I need the files so I'm hoping for something as cheap as possible but whatever will work. Any suggestions?
I downloaded a program called Test Disk which is made to find damaged partitions and read the drive. The harddrive has no partitions though, its just one big drive. I had the program display the list of files on the drive and all the folders and files appear to still be on the hard drive. The TestDisk program also came with a data recovery program. I started using it to recover the files, it estimated about 16 hours to move the files. After about 1 hr 40 min., I stopped it. It had recovered 366 files, all music files except for 2, but when I looked at the folder it was putting the files in, all the file names had been changed to f########. This wouldn't really be that big of a deal for my pictures, but I also have a lot of audio samples and things in there that are useless without the names.
I think I know what caused the problem. I usually turn off the hard drive when I'm done with it and I didn't know that I'm supposed to click the little button in the bottom right of the screen before turning off the drive. I found the problem at Seagate's help site:
http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...p?p_faqid=2526
It tells what can cause the problem, and what to do to keep it from happening again, but it does not tell how to fix it. I'm basically looking for a program that will read the hard drive and allow me to copy all the files and folders to a different hard drive without losing the names and folders. I don't really wanna spend a lot of money for this, but I need the files so I'm hoping for something as cheap as possible but whatever will work. Any suggestions?
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venom96737
what is the format type on it? Does it say RAW if it does your in for a tough time getting files back. I actually accomplished it once using a quick format and then getdataback as mentioned before RIGHT after the format the only problem was a very dew of the song came back with data messed up like the name of one and the song from another playing but i got MOST of the info back. Only problem is your going to have to buy one of those programs to get it working because the free trial will only allow you to get files of a limited size back.
well the once sounded bad when i reviewed it so i might add that I have only had to attempt it once when I had a bad sata connection on a controller i had so it has been a 100 percent completion so far. I might add that it did take some time but the most important thing is that you dont write anything new to the drive after you format it back to something that is readable.
try this tool : http://www.ptdd.com/
ASKER
The system is Fat32. I will try all suggestions and will post back.
ASKER
I'm trying the PC Inspector but I keep having it freeze up on me. My good computer is working so right now I'm stuck with my old sony which only has 265MB of ram and a 1.70GHz Pentium 4 so I order 1GB of ram (the max for this comp), the ram should be here in about a week, so maybe that will help. The program looks like it should do what I need if I can get it to run without freezing.
ASKER
I upgraded the ram to 1 GB and tried the PC Inspector. I've successfully recovered almost all of my files. Thanks a bunch.