Full HardDrive became partition RAW (please help!)

  • Thread starter Thread starter DavidMatyas
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DavidMatyas

I have a 300gb External HD. Last night as I was copying somefles off of
it, an error popd up saying that it cant read from the disk. when I
tried to browse to other folders, it said that it cant reasd them (even
though two minutes before that it was working fine). So i shut off the
srive and turned it back on, now it cant find any files on the drive,
and it says the fomat is RAW. But when i run a program like Ontrack, it
finds the files, but fith the wrong file names, just the proper
extensions. When I ran a SmartTest on it, it said that there were no
reported problems, and another program recognizes that it was supposed
to be a NTFS. The drive is almost full, so it will be a pain to copy
off all the files, escpecially since i do not have all the filenames.
Is there a way I can repair the HD (i t hink it is the partition table
that is damaged) without loosing anyof the files.

Thank you
 
I have a 300gb External HD. Last night as I was copying somefles off of
it, an error popd up saying that it cant read from the disk. when I
tried to browse to other folders, it said that it cant reasd them (even
though two minutes before that it was working fine). So i shut off the
srive and turned it back on, now it cant find any files on the drive,
and it says the fomat is RAW. But when i run a program like Ontrack, it
finds the files, but fith the wrong file names, just the proper
extensions. When I ran a SmartTest on it, it said that there were no
reported problems, and another program recognizes that it was supposed
to be a NTFS. The drive is almost full, so it will be a pain to copy
off all the files, escpecially since i do not have all the filenames.
Is there a way I can repair the HD (i t hink it is the partition table
that is damaged) without loosing anyof the files.

Thank you
Click to expand...

If the file names are corrupted, but the extensions are correct,
I would not suspect the partition table. First, with the power
off, make sure all the cables are seated completely to the drive
and the mother board. If you don't find a problem there,
and you have access to another machine, see if it can read that
drive correctly. You may be up a creek without a paddle, but
I have not run into that particular problem before - maybe
someone else here has a better idea. If you do manage to
get it back, give serious consideration to investing in one of
the backup imaging programs out there so you can do
regular backups.

mikey
 
Thank You for your response.
I forgot to mention that i have two of these drives, and the other one
works perfectly fine still using the same cables.
I dont know if the extensions really are correct, but ontrack has a
"raw recovery" option. and when i run it, it shows me some files name
fil01.exe, fil02.rar, etc...

Thank you
 
Thank You for your response.
I forgot to mention that i have two of these drives, and the other one
works perfectly fine still using the same cables.
I dont know if the extensions really are correct, but ontrack has a
"raw recovery" option. and when i run it, it shows me some files name
fil01.exe, fil02.rar, etc...

Thank you
Click to expand...

Based on that, my gut feel is the drive is scrambled -- hopefully
someone else here has a better solution. You might want to
check out some of the imaging solutions Acronis, Terabyte
IFD (Image For Dos) etc and consider making an image of
the drive making sure you do a full sector by sector copy so
you can then experiment, if it fails, restore the image and
experiment some more etc. At least that would give you a
point you could go back to in your efforts -- sometimes the
"fix" results in scrambling what is left. The Terabyte stuff, while
a bit "geeky" is good and has a loyal following (I am still
getting used to it). http://www.terabyteinc.com


mikey
 
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