I think my external HD was out of work, it displayed as RAW in the
Windows explorer, WHAT IS RAW?

What's worse, I can not access the files stored on the HD. Also some
strange characters displayed, I

can not read them. I connected it on my brother's pc, it's the same as
what I saw on my machine.

What I wanna to do now is to archive all the files. That's the most
important thing for me.

What should i do and how to do?

Previously (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I think my external HD was out of work, it displayed as RAW in the
> Windows explorer, WHAT IS RAW?

Not partitioned and/or formatted. In a sense "as bought in the shop",
i.e. raw...

> What's worse, I can not access the files stored on the HD. Also some
> strange characters displayed, I can not read them. I connected it on
> my brother's pc, it's the same as what I saw on my machine. What I
> wanna to do now is to archive all the files. That's the most
> important thing for me.

> What should i do and how to do?

First, make an image (sector-wise) copy of the disk. After that
you can try several different recovery software products, one
or the other may find your files again.

Arno

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:43:56 -0700 (PDT), (E-Mail Removed) put finger
to keyboard and composed:

>I think my external HD was out of work, it displayed as RAW in the
>Windows explorer, WHAT IS RAW?
>
>What's worse, I can not access the files stored on the HD. Also some
>strange characters displayed, I
>
>can not read them. I connected it on my brother's pc, it's the same as
>what I saw on my machine.

Can you post these (using cut and paste)?

>What I wanna to do now is to archive all the files. That's the most
>important thing for me.
>
>What should i do and how to do?

I had this problem when the boot sector of a logical volume was
zeroed. In my case I had to reconstruct the boot sector by hand.

I suggest that you refrain from trying to write to this disc. At least
try to make a copy of the MBR and partition table, and have a look at
the boot sector.

Assuming you are using Windows, you can dump the boot sector by
executing the following at a command prompt:

debug
-L 100 n 0 1 (where n=0,1,2,3 ... for drive A:,B:,C:,D: ...)
-D 100 2ff
-Q

Look for text strings such as FAT32, NTFS, NTLDR, IO.SYS, etc

For comparison purposes, here are various boot sector and MBR
templates extracted from AUTOCHK.EXE and DISKPART.EXE (Windows XP
Home):

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/XP_Boot/XP_Boot.zip

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On 28 Mar 2008 03:04:11 GMT, Arno Wagner <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Previously (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>> I think my external HD was out of work, it displayed as RAW in the
>> Windows explorer, WHAT IS RAW?
>
>Not partitioned and/or formatted. In a sense "as bought in the shop",
>i.e. raw...
>
>> What's worse, I can not access the files stored on the HD. Also some
>> strange characters displayed, I can not read them. I connected it on
>> my brother's pc, it's the same as what I saw on my machine. What I
>> wanna to do now is to archive all the files. That's the most
>> important thing for me.
>
>> What should i do and how to do?
>
>First, make an image (sector-wise) copy of the disk. After that
>you can try several different recovery software products, one
>or the other may find your files again.

I recommend the R-Studio products by r-tools technology.

http://www.r-studio.com/

Arno Wagner wrote in news:(E-Mail Removed)
> Previously (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> > I think my external HD was out of work, it displayed as RAW in the
> > Windows explorer, WHAT IS RAW?

> Not partitioned and/or formatted.
> In a sense "as bought in the shop", i.e. raw...

Wrong. It's a mode of access, without using a file system.
The drive in question may or may not have been partitioned and formatted.

>
> > What's worse, I can not access the files stored on the HD. Also some
> > strange characters displayed, I can not read them. I connected it on
> > my brother's pc, it's the same as what I saw on my machine. What I
> > wanna to do now is to archive all the files. That's the most
> > important thing for me.
>
> > What should i do and how to do?
>
> First, make an image (sector-wise) copy of the disk. After that
> you can try several different recovery software products, one
> or the other may find your files again.
>
> Arno