Exterior Hard Drive Crash

[bobbymike]

My Sony Windows XP Media Edition crashed a few months ago .. luckily I had
all my important documents, photos, etc backed up on a WD exterior hard
drive. In August I got a new Dell Inspiron 530 Desktop running Windows XP
Professional. Unfortunately I did not copy all the important info from the
exterior hard drive to this new Dell. Last week, I went to open up the
exterior hard drive and this message came on screen - 'The Disk in Drive F
is not formatted. Do you want to format it now'- Long story short, took the
exterior hard drive to my trusted computer guy who ran it all weekend trying
to recover the data . He had no luck - could not recover anything. Short of
spending $$$$$$$ does anyone have any ideas about what I could possibly do
next - or is this a dead issue? And would anyone have a possible reason as
to why this exterior hard drive crashed in the first place. Thanks for any
and all input.

 

[DL]

A hd drive can be DOA or fail at anytime, theres nothing you can do to
prevent failure, other than not dropping one.
There are Companies that will recover data, if it is recoverable - no
recovery no fee.
About the only thing a user can do is to keep multiple backups on differeing
media & in differing locations

 

[bobbymike]

Don't know if this will help, but, I had a USB drive suddenly go
bonkers.... one day I plugged it in and it wouldn't show up. I checked
with Disk Management and it was there, but, listed as 'hidden'. Don't have
a clue how or why it became 'hidden'. I 'unhid' the disk and BINGO, all my
files were back. Just an experience I had..... you never know with
computers.....

Good Morning Marine Corps - SemperFi - I don't currently have the drive -
it's at the computer repair shop = when I get it
Back I will check it out per your instructions - When you say you Unhid the
disk ... What exactly does this mean? Thanks Much

 

[Patrick Keenan]

A hd drive can be DOA or fail at anytime, theres nothing you can do to
prevent failure, other than not dropping one.
There are Companies that will recover data, if it is recoverable - no
recovery no fee.

You'd want to establish this before contracting with the company. You may
wind up with a charge even if recovery is not successful.

Most companies will provide estimates of both cost and recovery
possibilities, but as producing the estimate can require opening the drive
and mounting the platters on their hardware, estimates aren't always free.

You are correct, relying on one single backup is not prudent.

HTH
-pk

 

[Plato]

My Sony Windows XP Media Edition crashed a few months ago .. luckily I had
all my important documents, photos, etc backed up on a WD exterior hard
drive. In August I got a new Dell Inspiron 530 Desktop running Windows XP

Also back up to CDs