Maxtor 120GB drive problem

[condor897]

Okay, it's my own fault. I was futzing around with one of my 120GB drives and had it sitting
beside the tower, still plugged into the controller and power. I left the room for just a minute
and the damn cat knocked the drive over (I swear it wasn't me). I heard it fall flat on the table,
not the floor. The drive seemed to be functioning fine until I rebooted the PC. Now WinXP
wants to tell me the drive is unformatted. I ran the Maxtor PowerMax disk on it and the diagnostic
gives me a code and tells me I need to contact Maxtor. It turns out this code is an RMA
number for service for the drive. All attempts to access the drive wind up showing that the
drive is not formatted or even partitioned. This is bull, as there is almost 20GB worth of data
on the drive.

I don't have anything seriously important on the drive, but I would like to retrieve the data and
a good portion of the files. Is there any freeware utility that can recover the FAT or at least let
me access the disc, so I can move the files to a different drive?

Thanks.

 

[Noozer]

Okay, it's my own fault. I was futzing around with one of my 120GB drives and had it sitting
beside the tower, still plugged into the controller and power. I left the room for just a minute
and the damn cat knocked the drive over (I swear it wasn't me). I heard it fall flat on the table,
not the floor. The drive seemed to be functioning fine until I rebooted the PC. Now WinXP
wants to tell me the drive is unformatted. I ran the Maxtor PowerMax disk on it and the diagnostic
gives me a code and tells me I need to contact Maxtor. It turns out this code is an RMA
number for service for the drive. All attempts to access the drive wind up showing that the
drive is not formatted or even partitioned. This is bull, as there is almost 20GB worth of data
on the drive.

It's not bull, it's broken... Most likely the head hit the platter and
damaged it or knocked it out of alignment.

Consider yourself lucky if Maxtor RMA's the drive... all it will cost you is
shipping and some data.

 

[kony]

Okay, it's my own fault. I was futzing around with one of my 120GB drives and had it sitting
beside the tower, still plugged into the controller and power. I left the room for just a minute
and the damn cat knocked the drive over (I swear it wasn't me). I heard it fall flat on the table,
not the floor. The drive seemed to be functioning fine until I rebooted the PC. Now WinXP
wants to tell me the drive is unformatted. I ran the Maxtor PowerMax disk on it and the diagnostic
gives me a code and tells me I need to contact Maxtor. It turns out this code is an RMA
number for service for the drive. All attempts to access the drive wind up showing that the
drive is not formatted or even partitioned. This is bull, as there is almost 20GB worth of data
on the drive.

I don't have anything seriously important on the drive, but I would like to retrieve the data and
a good portion of the files. Is there any freeware utility that can recover the FAT or at least let
me access the disc, so I can move the files to a different drive?

Thanks.

It's dead, no software is going to help. Next time be sure to install
the cat in the cage first.