Hard Drive with all my mp3s suddenly not working

[shawnharper]

I have a 160G drive that I have all my mp3s on (90 gigs). It's the
slave drive in my system (WinXP). A couple days ago, it became no
longer accessable. It shows up in Windows explorer, but it's "name"
is gone (now just Local Disk D and when I click on it it says that
the drive is not formatted, and asks if I'd like to format it.

I'm really bummed. This was my "backup drive" for all my mp3s, which
were stored on my car hard-disk based mp3 player, which was stolen
from my car last Monday night.

So, in the last week, I've gone from 2 copies of all my mp3s to ZERO!


I hope someone has some suggestions to help me out.

Thanks,
Shawn

(note - I also posted this in the HW troubleshooting section, but
thought the real HD experts may just hang out in this forum. Sorry
if this is considered crossposting)

 

[Joep]

Service pack level?

 

[Eric Gisin]

The error means the boot sector is corrupt, or a bad sector in the system
areas.

If it was NTFS, "findntfs <drive> 0 1 1" will list the files on first
partition of drive. Download from www.partitionsupport.com

 

[shawnharper]

It's SP2.

I'll try that site Eric.

Thanks.

 

[Avid Gamer]

Do these dumbfucks ever back things up ??

 

[Matti Lamprhey]

"shawnharper" wrote...

I have a 160G drive that I have all my mp3s on (90 gigs). It's the
slave drive in my system (WinXP). A couple days ago, it became no
longer accessable. It shows up in Windows explorer, but it's "name"
is gone (now just Local Disk D and when I click on it it says that
the drive is not formatted, and asks if I'd like to format it. [...]

I hope someone has some suggestions to help me out.

Something similar happened to me with a 250GB disk when I went to XP SP2
the other week. Because of other problems I reverted immediately to
SP1, but then found that one of the partitions on that drive had become
inaccessible just as described above. The first partition (125GB) was
still fine.

I suspect that the SP change has mucked up 48-bit LBA addressing and
thereby made everything beyond 137GB invisible to Windows. Could this
be right? If it is, then my advice to the OP here is to hold off from
reformatting attempts for the moment! I'm still waiting for WD tech
support to confirm or deny my theory.

Matti

 

[Mike Redrobe]

Do these *"&!*! ever back things up ??

Do top posters ever read threads before replying ?

He did have a backup, the drive in question IS a backup
of his in-car MP3 player, which was stolen.

 

[shawnharper]

Avid Gamerwrote:
Do these dumbfucks ever back things up ??

On 4 Oct 2004 21:06:35 -0400,
(e-mail address removed)-spam.invalid
(shawnharper) wrote:

It's SP2.

I'll try that site Eric.

Thanks.[/quote:440caf2629]

Boy, before calling ME a D.F., you should really read the post.

My backup (my car mp3 player) was stolen this same week, so I was in
the process of finding a new drive to make as a backup when this one
crashed.

If you have something of help to offer, please do. Otherwise, piss
off.


Matti -

I'm currently recovering the data with getbackdata. It's a slow
process, but seems to be working. I'm just not sure if it'll all be
there when all is said and done, and I know my directory structure is
toast. BUT, some data is much better than NO data. Please let me
know how your inquiry with WD customer support turns out. I upgraded
to SP2 about a week before this happened, but the drive worked OK
after that.

-Shawn

 

[Avid Gamer]

Can't make DVD backups ?

"shawnharper" wrote...

I have a 160G drive that I have all my mp3s on (90 gigs). It's the
slave drive in my system (WinXP). A couple days ago, it became no
longer accessable. It shows up in Windows explorer, but it's "name"
is gone (now just Local Disk D and when I click on it it says that
the drive is not formatted, and asks if I'd like to format it. [...]

I hope someone has some suggestions to help me out.

Something similar happened to me with a 250GB disk when I went to XP SP2
the other week. Because of other problems I reverted immediately to
SP1, but then found that one of the partitions on that drive had become
inaccessible just as described above. The first partition (125GB) was
still fine.

I suspect that the SP change has mucked up 48-bit LBA addressing and
thereby made everything beyond 137GB invisible to Windows. Could this
be right? If it is, then my advice to the OP here is to hold off from
reformatting attempts for the moment! I'm still waiting for WD tech
support to confirm or deny my theory.

Matti

 

[Matti Lamprhey]

Can't make DVD backups ?

I certainly can, but I fail to see the relevance.

Matti

 

[dh]

How about this, use Ghost 2003 to make an image of the bad drive. Then
use ghost explorer to pull the MP3's out of the image.

 

[Matti Lamprhey]

How about this, use Ghost 2003 to make an image of the bad drive. Then
use ghost explorer to pull the MP3's out of the image.

I don't have Ghost but I do have DriveImage 7 and PartitionMagic 7.
Running these under Windows, neither can see the second partition, the
one that spans the 137GB mark.

Matti

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I certainly can, but I fail to see the relevance.

The Little Teapot troll is from Australia.
That should be relevance enough.

 

[dh]

Not familiar with Drive Image 7, can it boot to a recovery disk under
dos? Maybe the partition can be seen from dos but not from windows. I
know Ghost can image partitions that can not be seen from windows
(linix). Maybe image the whole disk and not just the partition. Good
Luck.

 

[Matti Lamprhey]

Thanks for the suggestion. I might try that approach, and if so I'll
post the results.

Matti

 

[Guest]

shawnharper- [4 Oct 2004 18:03:04 -0400]:

I have a 160G drive that I have all my mp3s on (90 gigs). It's [bought
the farm] >I'm really bummed. This was my "backup drive" for all my mp3s

Time to get back to encoding ... let's see, 90,000 MB at
1 MB / minute (whatever), so, 90k minutes of tunes (hm,
1500 CD's worth), figure 10 seconds encode time per minute
(hm, don't forget rip time) you've got a 1500-hour job
ahead. I'll assume you can rip in zero-time. So, if you
don't sleep, eat, or be merry, you'll be done in 62.5 days
(china hours: 24/7). Hop to it!

So, in the last week, I've gone from 2 copies of all my mp3s to ZERO!

Oooo, I see. Well, look on the bright side -- you don't have
a 1500-hour job ahead of you. Under 25 and so bright!