[manimal]

HELP!!!! my backup and picture storage drive has either been corrupted or just plain disappeared. if i try to go into it i get a "drive has not been formatted, would you like to format it now?" and of course, i click "no".

upon windows startup (xp), it gives me a drive error and begins to check the drive and cannot locate and sectors of the disk.

i pulled it out and reinstalled it to make sure the connection was ok and it's fine in that regard

i can't even pull up properties when i right click the drive, it just freezes.

so is this a virus that wiped it out or maybe a hardware problem?

i screwed up and haven't updated my virus software in a couple of weeks, could something new have come out that i missed?

the last program i ran on the system before this happened was "ad-aware" and it detected no new problems.

anyone have any advice on how i can restore my drive? i had about 10GB of family/riding pics and vids on there and my wife is freaking out! baby birth pics and all!

 

[FR Dragon]

Uh maybe you should like, reinstall the drive to see if that works (maybe install it on some other bike)...it's really hard to know which problems you have without pics or something like that...

 

[T0mo]

stupid crap

Are you high?

 

[manimal]

Uh maybe you should like, reinstall the drive to see if that works (maybe install it on some other bike)...it's really hard to know which problems you have without pics or something like that...

go back to pinkbike sh**brick. they call this the "lounge" for a reason.

 

[manziman]

<snip>it's really hard to know which problems you have without pics or something like that...

maybe you should take some screen shots!! that'll solve things..

 

[Ciaran]

It sounds like a hardware issue. (The drive is going bad)

Did the drive have an operating system installed on it? Did the PC boot up from the drive?

As you alredy know, DO NOT format the drive.

I would pull it and then stick it into a different system as a slave drive. See if the system recognizes the drive. If it recognizes it and sees it, then try to access it.

If these things do not work I have a recovery program that I can upload for you. What it does is to recover corrupted, deleted and reformatted data. Here's the thing... The info is digital but it's stored in a physical way. (magnetic) When you delete or reformat a drive the PC only changes the markers on the drive. Imagine a file cabinet filled with papers and records with each drawer labeled with the contents. You decide these papers and records are no longer needed. So you remove the labels from the filing cabinet drawers and relabel them as "Usable". The old papers are there still untill you actually put something new in the filing cabinet that replaces the old paperwork. See what I am getting at? If the PC can see and access the drive, the program may be able to recover the data despite any formatting or corruption.

And if all else fails there are companies that specialize in data recovery. It is expenive but they will take the HDD apart and recover off of the individual platters.

I know that there are folks on here that are waaaay more tech saavy than me. Hopefully someone else will have a better solution. Tell your wife not to worry too much. You should be able to recover the data... the only questions are how long, how much data and how much will it cost.

And when we are all done we are going to talk about RAID systems. 10 gigs of important family photos is too much to not have a rock solid back up system.

 

[SkaredShtles]

Also, some post-advice:

If you have a "backup" drive, make sure that it only has backups of your data on it.

Don't combine functions like "backups and photo storage" - if you lose the drive, as you've discovered, you're screwed.

I have my data on one drive, backups written to another drive, and I write my photos to DVD (and I make two copies - one for off-site storage at a relative's house). That way I basically have 4 "bail-out" options if the $hit really hits the fan.

I don't want to lose data. Operating systems I don't care so much about. It's the data that's crucial.

 

[pigboy]

HELP!!!!

<snip>

i can't even pull up properties when i right click the drive, it just freezes.

so is this a virus that wiped it out or maybe a hardware problem?

<snip>

diagnosis: drive is having hardware problems. either the drive platters are starting to have bad sectors OR the disk controller board ate itself for lunch.

FIRST: stop powering the drive up. disconnect it from your system and leave it turned off!
WHY: bad sector problems sometimes spread across the disk platters and make data recovery hard or impossible on those sectors.

option #1: spend the money to have professionals recover the data off of the drive platters.
option #2: try to recover the data yourself using products from Symantec, Norton, etc. but if the system freezes when you try to access the drive properties then you are likely to see this when trying to use these data recovery programs too.....
option #3: try to format the drive like someone else suggested and THEN use the data recovery programs suggested in option #2. DON'T do this. you are likely to permanently delete the files and then option #1 may not even be an option anymore......
option #4: buy your wife a tremendously expensive piece of jewelry.

personally i advise you do option #1.

pigboy
nerd-at-large

 

[manimal]

update:
i attempted to install norton systemwork '05 to use it's recovery tool but it won't even allow me to install it. i tried to uninstall my current, outdated, software but nothing comes up in my "add/remove programs" cue. i mean NOTHING. it just sits there forever with a "gathering programs list" and nothing ever populates so i can't even uninstall my old virus crap. then i tried to delete my virus software in program files and i received an "access denied" message.

so not only has my secondary drive screwed up, i can't even use add/remove programs. i wen to best buy where i bought the drive and they said i'd have to call the drive manufacturer...so much for the "geek squad"

any recommendations for a place that can restore my drive?

 

[hooples3]

if you cant get it owrking yourself, do yourself a huge favor.. bring it to a computer place.. they can more than likely copy everything on the old drive to the new drive.

 

[manimal]

just received a quote to salvage my drive......$500 - $2400. oh well, screw that!

 

[manimal]

another update:

well, i gave in and best buy had a killer deal on a PC that is about twice as fast and cool as my broke one

old pc = 20gb (stock, extra 80gb drive that crashed), 512mb SDRAM, cd-rw/cd, no fire-wire, 4 usb ports, 15" big arse monitor and no printer *cost at time of purchase = $1000

new pc = 200gb HD, 1gb DDRAM, dvd-rw/cd, fire-wire port, 6 usb ports, upgraded graphics card comparible to the one i just installed on the old pc, 15" flat panel monitor and 4-in-1 massive printer (that i'm going to sell since i don't need it)

cost at time of purchase = $650!!!

as far as the lost drive, i have most of the important stuff, including pics, on my police laptop and cd's that i've burned over the years. so i guess this was just a forced upgrade

 

[Dirty]

ive had this problem happen to me before too. My stuff was worthless so i jsut reformatted, but i tried a recovery tool called Easy Recovery Pro. It was able to check the drive, and see all of my files. But the only catch is to recover them i needed to copy them to another drive. Since i didnt have an extra 200gb of space, i gave up. have you tried anything like this.?

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

wait..
i had that problem before.. i lost about 40 gigabytes of information.
i went to this store, and they recovered more than 30 gigabytes...

your information is not lost, seems that the format is messed. dont format it yet (you´ll erase it). this guy used some software that pulled all the data from my unformatted HD....
they can recover anything from burned, broken, dismantled hard drives... they have some weird machines that read the HD discs one by one sector by sector and recover your data......

if your data is very important, do that... otherwise, just format the mofo...

 

[manimal]

wait..
i had that problem before.. i lost about 40 gigabytes of information.
i went to this store, and they recovered more than 30 gigabytes...

your information is not lost, seems that the format is messed. dont format it yet (you´ll erase it). this guy used some software that pulled all the data from my unformatted HD....
they can recover anything from burned, broken, dismantled hard drives... they have some weird machines that read the HD discs one by one sector by sector and recover your data......

if your data is very important, do that... otherwise, just format the mofo...

as i posted before, the company that does recovery charges a min of $500 to recover a drive. i have most of the stuff that was lost on miscellaneous cd's and my other computer. i tried to format the drive but it was not allowing me to access any of the admin tools. i'm pretty sure it was a virus because everything, not just what was on the backup drive, started to screw up.

anyhoo, i'm gonna try and fix it so my son can use it in his room for games. this new one kicks arse!

 

[Changleen]

Sorry to hear that dude, I've been there myself. I lost 40GB of music and a whole bunch of videos including all the first 3 seasons of Family Guy! You should look around for other recovery companies though, I've been quoted less than $200, which is far more reasonable. That was in SF. I never went through with it though.

 

[manimal]

anybody have an idea of a better way to format the drive? i went through command prompt and tried "format c:" but it says that another program is using the drive and would i like to boot the other program off. i answer "yes" but it says the drive is locked and cannot perform the format. weird. never saw that in my A+ classes.

i just want the darn thing wiped clean so i can reinstall the basics to make it a gaming only pc

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

Sorry to hear that dude, I've been there myself. I lost 40GB of music and a whole bunch of videos including all the first 3 seasons of Family Guy! You should look around for other recovery companies though, I've been quoted less than $200, which is far more reasonable. That was in SF. I never went through with it though.

i was quoted 35, but ended up paying 20 bucks ...

 

[Ciaran]

anybody have an idea of a better way to format the drive? i went through command prompt and tried "format c:" but it says that another program is using the drive and would i like to boot the other program off. i answer "yes" but it says the drive is locked and cannot perform the format. weird. never saw that in my A+ classes.

i just want the darn thing wiped clean so i can reinstall the basics to make it a gaming only pc

Depending on your OS.... MyComputer, Right click on the drive and click on FORMAT. You can also try a 3rd party app like Partition Magic.

Also, make sure the jumpers on the drive are set to SLAVE. Jumpers can cause funny errors.