HARDRIVE ERASED everything??????

Hi

I have a BeyondMicro 300gb external harddrive. Dont know what happened, but whenever I plug it in now it says the drive is not formatted. When I try to format it, it tells me this will erase everything onthe drive! I have about 60 gb of documents on it and movies.

All of them except movies have backup at home(I think) but can anybody help me out and fix my drive? What happened?!

 

Try by starting here:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1139

It's an intro into hard drive data recovery. I remember running into a problem like this a few years back and reading this article or one like it. Remember, DON"T format the drive, it will reduce the likelihood of being able to recover your data; it may make it completely unrecoverable.

If you are relatively technically adept you should be able to recover a least some of the data, otherwise I would recommend paying for either one of the online services, available software or a local recovery service.

Good Luck!

 

This happend to me before too. It was a hardware problem in my case. The disk was not pluged into the case correct. I took the case apart and pluged the disk in securly again and problem was fixed. No data recovery needed.

External USB disks, especily the cheaper self build ones seem to have alot of problems like this.

 

using the livecd of knoppix one can copy information from the hard disk one cannot boot to. one can even restore information on the partitions you have deleted, reformated, etc. it's not difficult! so, no panic!

 

if you go to disk mangment does it show disk partion as raw?

 

When I plug it in now the hardrive makes clicking noises, the light is red and green(instead of green), and even though it shows up on my computer as "local disk F" when I try to right click it my computer just freezes up and I will have to close the My Computer tab.

I opened it but nothing much to be done there. There was this black box that said harddrive but it doesnt have screws do I dont know how to open it.

The worst part is that it is 13months now since I bought it so it is past the 1 year warranty.

 

If you bought it with a credit card you might be eligible for an extended warranty through your credit card company.

Take a look here for more details.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64951

 

Some times it does happens that hard drive become inaccessible. To get back your data try Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software a file and partition recovery utility.
Try the software by downloading the demo from: http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

 

I would recommend checking out "Recover My Files" to try and get your files back. I have had very good experiences with it, and you can download the trial version to find out what files it would be able to recover. You have to purchase the license to actually get the data back though. But I have a very high success rate with it in the past, so hopefully it can help you out to.

Get the program and run the 'full format recovery,' and that ought to help you.

 

I wonder if this is a power supply problem and the HDD is not getting enough power to spin up properly. One course of action could be to buy a new enclosure (with PSU) and try your HDD in that. Maybe it will work (and if it doesn't then you can get another HDD to put into that enclosure).

John

 

You haven't changed the computer with which you're using the disk have you?

 

Red lights and clicking noises usually = bad hdd.

Try software recovery methods as others have suggested. Depending on how valuable the data is, there are professional recovery services available.

If all else fails, it's time to buy a new disk and restore from all those regular backups you've been diligently producing.