Oh PLEASE someone tell me how to fix this drive!!

[dvd_master]

Latley, my one or two months old 160 GB harddrive did this damn thing where if I try to open anything from it, go to it from My Computer, etc. it gives me the error F:\ is not accessible. The paramater is incorrect. After some restarts, it just says it's not formatted. I then lose ALL my data, and I have some very very tedious work I did stored there and only there.

This happened once before, when I compiled a DVD project there. I thought the drive just didn't like compiling directly to the drive, so I reformatted, lost all my stuff (A LOT less), and no problems since.

Recently I captured a large large uncompressed AVI video file. Might that have something to do with it?

I do NOT want to have to re-format it and lose EVERYTHING. Anyone know why?

[dvd_maniac]

Didn't you have this problem with Maestro compiles before. I thought I remember something about it? Anyways, did you try connecting it with another cable? to another ide/sata channel? try to read it in dos mode? Put it into another computer as a slave drive or secondary and attempt to read it from there?

[Sirber]

good idea, try mounting it on another drive / operating system.

[b0b0b0b]

Originally posted by dvd_master
so I reformatted, lost all my stuff (A LOT less), and no problems since.


Have you run scandisk or chkdsk ?

Is SpinRite applicable?

If you break the drive into smaller partitions, if there is a bad portion, maybe you will lose less data in the future.

Good luck!

[ppera2]

Easy recovery pro is for such cases. It can find files even when partition table is damaged.

Norton Disk Editor is also very useful - in hands of expert.

[windtrader]

R-Studio is a very powerful tool for recoverying data on a HD. Do the other typical checks to see what is screwed: bad MBR, FAT, media errors, etc. R-Studio can physically recover what ever is readable off the drive.