Vista crashed external HD

[Guest]

I have several external HDs connected to my system, all via USB. I was
copying information from one HD to another when I connected a USB thumb
drive. Vista reset all of the connections and crashed the HD I was copying
from. I believe the table is corrupted. Is there a fix for this so I can
recover the data?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Swift Sword.

I believe the table is corrupted.

What table? The partition table should not have been affected - for any
drive.

I have several external HDs connected to my system, all via USB.

Have you used Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to specifically assign letters
to each HD? Or do you let Vista choose the letter each time you plug in a
drive, using the rules built into Vista? Have you assigned a letter for the
USB thumb drive?

For any or all of the drives, have you set the Policies to Optimize for
quick removal or to Optimize for performance?

Is there a fix for this so I can
recover the data?

Plugging in the thumb drive should not have affected the copy operation.
Even if some glitch affected the destination write, there should be no
effect at all on the source. What kind of error messages are you seeing?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Guest]

Hello R.C.,

What table? The partition table should not have been affected - for any
drive.

I had the drive non-destructively analized to see if they could access the
data. They could not and told me that this is a known issue with the current
version of Vista.

Have you used Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to specifically assign letters
to each HD? Or do you let Vista choose the letter each time you plug in a
drive, using the rules built into Vista? Have you assigned a letter for the
USB thumb drive?

For any or all of the drives, have you set the Policies to Optimize for
quick removal or to Optimize for performance?

I did not set any policies, Vista has control over what drive letters are
assigned. After the event occured I tried the drive in several different
machines, Vista and XP, internally and externally, to see if I could access
the information. No joy.

Plugging in the thumb drive should not have affected the copy operation.
Even if some glitch affected the destination write, there should be no
effect at all on the source. What kind of error messages are you seeing?

You are correct, there should not have been an error, but there we are. I
plugged in the thumbdrive and ALL my external drives disconnected all at
once. There was no error given, and the machine is not infected with any
virus or malware. I was able to re-connect all the drives once I re-booted,
except the one I was reading from on the copy. That drive is no longer
recognized on any system and indicates it needs formatted.

The HD is a Maxtor Diamond Plus 9 120gb SATA 150. I had another one, exact
same specs and in the same kind of external bay at the time. It did not fail.


Thanks!
Dan

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Dan.

I've been waiting, hoping someone else would jump in with a new idea, since
I don't have one. :^{

My only remaining thought is that you may have had a hard disk failure
simply coincidentally with the insertion of the thumb drive. Far out, I
know, but such strange things have happened to others - and to me.

Have you run the Maxtor/Seagate HD testing utilities on this drive? If it's
in warranty, you could get an RMA and replace the drive. That won't recover
your lost data, of course, but might ease just a little of the pain. I had
a similarly-devastating meltdown last year and Maxtor replaced two HDs. I
lost several GB of data, mostly family photos, but R-Studio helped me get
back MOST of them. The rest are gone forever, because I sent the bad HDs
back to Maxtor after recovering as much as I could and giving up on the
rest.

I had the drive non-destructively analized to see if they could access the
data. They could not and told me that this is a known issue with the
current
version of Vista.

Known? To whom? I've never heard of anything close to this and I've been
involved with Vista since it was called Longhorn. Who are "they"? And
precisely what "issue" is "this"?

I
plugged in the thumbdrive and ALL my external drives disconnected all at
once. There was no error given,

I don't know how to test that thumb drive, or the USB port that it might
have been plugged into. But I would be cautious about it until I know that
it was not a factor in the problem.

Good luck. And please post back if you find out anything that might help us
help others if they report a similar problem.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)