Unable to access HDD

[TheTrader]

Hi guys,

I've got an external HDD connecting via USB that has stopped working
all of a sudden. Pluging it in starts the drive up and running and
loads the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray but is not
showing a drive letter in explorer. I went into Disk Management and I
can see the drive but it is shown as Disk 1 Basic Online, but
Unallocated. It looks like a partition issue or MBR? Can anyone advise
a tool I could use to run some diagnostics and repair on it? The
contents are important and some of it is not backed up so I would like
to take a cautious approach with this one.

Thanks
Eyal

 

[Rod Speed]

I've got an external HDD connecting via USB that has stopped
working all of a sudden. Pluging it in starts the drive up and
running and loads the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system
tray but is not showing a drive letter in explorer. I went into Disk
Management and I can see the drive but it is shown as Disk 1 Basic
Online, but Unallocated. It looks like a partition issue or MBR?
Yep.

Can anyone advise a tool I could use to
run some diagnostics and repair on it?

I like Easy Recovery Pro, but it isnt free.

The contents are important and some of it is not backed
up so I would like to take a cautious approach with this one.

Bit risky doing it yourself, safer to use one of the cheaper recovery
operations.
http://www.retrodata.co.uk/

 

[TheTrader]

Thanks for the reply.

I like Easy Recovery Pro, but it isnt free.

Quite an understatement as pricing seems to be in the 3 to 4 digit
scale for a mind-boggling variety of different tools, options, licenses
types.

I'm located in NZ so will have a look around if there are local
providers here.

Rgds.

 

[TheTrader]

An update, I ended up using Testdisk-6.2 and wrote a new MBR to the
disk. It still didn't work. I brought the HD back home to continue
working on it, plugged it in and voila.. it works. So it might not be
out of the woods yet but all data is being backed-up and I'll do a full
re-format.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

 

[Rod Speed]

An update, I ended up using Testdisk-6.2 and wrote a new MBR to the
disk. It still didn't work. I brought the HD back home to continue
working on it, plugged it in and voila.. it works. So it might not be
out of the woods yet but all data is being backed-up and I'll do a
full re-format.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Thanks for the feedback.