Working HD suddenly becomes unreadable

[ukb007]

Hi, Pros.

Here's something that has happened to me >>

My second Hard Drive - Samsung 40 GB - is recognised in Windows Explorer and shows up in My Computer, but is completely unreadable all on a sudden. My computer lists it as 'Local Drive ( D: )', Type 'Local Drive' but all other info (Size, Free Space) are blank.

Initially, I had partitioned it in MS-DOS and then formatted it from Win_Me. Thereafter, I had run a scandisk (thorough), and then Read and Write proceeded fine from that drive, both from Win_Me and Win_XP. Suddenly, one fine morning, I discovered that I was shut out of that drive.

One thing I'm reasonably sure of: there are no bad sectors in it.

Approaching the drive with A:>fdisk revealed that the 'System' was 'unknown' instead of 'FAT 32'. And scandisk says it couldn't scan the drive.

What do I do ? I'm not sure whether, with the partition disturbed {as seems possible}, a data recovery software will be of any use. How do I get my data back ? Of course, nothing in life is absolutely necessary because life itself isn't permanent, but it'd be temporarily nice to get the data back.

Regards.

[bit-wise]

I know this is a long shot, but I've had similar things happen to me before. One cause I've experienced is that the drive cables do work themselves free after a while. The constant expansion and contraction due to heat given off by the internals tend to work things like drive cables and memory free after a while.

Do try and reseat the cables before attempting more drastic measures.

A few questions. Some motherboards (such as A-Bit) will display the drives it has recognized when the machine boots up. If your motherboard does this, is it recognizing the drive? (You can also try going into the bios and see if the drive is, in fact, listed).

Are you using any boot managers, such as System Commander? They swap in and out boot records and enable/disable drives dynamically. I've had problems with System Commander before.

You mentioned that the words "partition disturbed". Is the entire physical drive unrecognizable (I think it is, judging by your first few paragraphs), or is it only a logical partition on a drive that has gone south?

[ukb007]

I don't think it's the cable. The drive does show up in My Computer, and is autodetected and listed in the BIOS. Removing the cable, of course, makes it invisible.

It's the entire physical drive (Samsung 40 GB) - there's one partition in it - that has shut down on me. It's configured as my primary slave.

Originally, my sole master HD Seagate Barracuda 80 GB had three partitions to begin with: C, D, E. The Samsung 40 GB was purchased some days later, and when I put it in as the primary slave, the old Seagate showed up the three partitions as C, E, F and the Samsung positioned itself in the middle to became D. (This must have a rational explanation, only that I've forgotten it.)

Today I ran Kroll-Ontrack's Data Advisor - a system diagnostic that runs on DR-DOS from Calebra from a floppy disk. It says that the partition is "unrecognized". There is no error on a lengthy surface scan. The drive fails in no other tests.

I thought there's no mechanical or hardware issue in it; now I'm sure. It may be that FAT32 is disrupted somehow. I had given drive's name 'Video Works', but now it shows up just as 'Local drive (D:)'. That made me suspect that the fault was in the navigational information (file addressing) area.

I was browsing for data recovery software - apparently it's another lucretive business out there, after AntiVirus. Everybody offers Demo versions and all these will let you see your files and folders in the rogue drive, but to retrieve them you'll have to buy the software!

I'd really be obliged if I could get a link to some freeware Data Recovery tool. I can't believe there aren't any.

Regards.

[bit-wise]

Since you've tried accessing the drive from both DOS and Windows, I think your correct in your thinking that its the drive itself. Either something overwrote the FAT (or partition tables) or the on-board controller is going south.

I'm not sure if Symantec offers a try-and-buy for Norton Utilities (I'm sure you've checked already), but they do seem to have been in the data recovery business for quite some time.

Other than that, I'm sure someone here has a suggestion on a freeware tool.

www.webattack.com (now snapfiles.com) has a huge offering of freeware and trial ware. And what do you know, there's an add banner for a free trial (http://www.snapfiles.com/features/filescavenger-811-421200.php) of a data recovery tool!

Keep us posted...

[ukb007]

The tool in question (in www.webattack.com) is only for NTFS formatted Win NT/2000/XP Hard Drives. I'll go see what Symantec has to offer. But, as I said, everyone offers to let you see your locked files, and you can get them back only if you purchase the product !

Regards.

[insite]

are these scsi or ide? if they are scsi, open your scsi bios and throttle back the bandwidth on that drive. If they are ide, open device manager and switch your ide controllers to PIO temporarily. if after a reboot you can read the drive in PIO, the HD I/O controller is bad.

[ukb007]

I'll try this and let you know.

Regards.

[vinkes]

This might be a long shot....

I had the same prob about 2-3 years ago. The problem was my psu, I just bought a brand new 4gb (!) hdd and new (atx)case. Every worked as a charm, but after a few weeks started getting read errors and sometimes the motherboards would not reconigze the hdd at all.

Hmmmm.... so i rma'ed the hdd, got a new one, same thing after a couple of weeks. I started searching for possible problems and running endless runs of diagnostics. Nothing found, until I read on a forum that high +12 volts from a psu can slowly kill a hdd or any other ide device.
So i checked my voltage, my +12 voltline was 12,9 volts, with is 0,4 volts higher than the safe maximum. I bought a new (quality)psu and never had the problem before.
So you wanna check your 12volt line, hope it works.

Good luck!

[ukb007]

What you reported is ominous. I'll check up and let the result be known.

Thanks.