External HDD Help

[Bluesmanager]

Recently my HDD's wire has been showing signs of... well... near knackered-dom, really. So I got it replaced. However, just before I did, my laptop wasn't recognising the HDD, saying it needed reformatting before use.

It still is even after the thing's been replaced.

I can't reformat the thing, I'd lose several gigs of data (downloaded scripts, music, and all my uni work for the semester among other things).

HELP!

 

[MK Shrimper]

Have you tried it on another PC?

 

[Bluesmanager]

Yep. Probably a virus or something (friend's FB got hacked, alas, I only found out about an hour post-probable-infection). Damn.

 

[jstallan]

what make is the External HDD ? Some manufacturers have utility tools on their website to aid recovery/tests. I've had a few western Digital drives fail, but managed to get them replaced under warranty, thankfully I only use them to backup data on laptops and not as a single point of storage.

If the only option is to format the drive, then do so and google 'recover deleted files'. Some of the products manage to recover files even after a drive format. Never tried it, but there are some free tools.

Last option would be to befriend a Police Forensic Officer - I think they have have the tools!

 

[jstallan]

As I had some time to kill I thought I'd experiment.

Found 'one' of my portable drives and copied some data to it.
formatted the drive (actually it was a Fat32 drive and now it's NTFS)
downloaded and installed free product from http://www.recovering-deleted-files.net/
scanned the portable drive (advanced section of program to deselect laptop 'C' drive)
found the data files I copied to the drive prior to formatting... :smile: