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USB hard disk problem

Last answer on Mar 5, 2009 8:40:31 am GMT albert, on Dec 9, 2008 4:10:45 am GMT 
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Hello,
I am facing a hard disk drive reading problem since last one month and not able to resolve it.

The thing is I purchased external USB hard disk (seagate 40 gb) 2 years back.And uptil now its working perfectly fine. But suddenly one day I am not able to read my data. The problem goes like that, I have partitioned my external hard disk in two drives and named them HDD and BACKUP. But now whenever I connect my hard disk to the system. It shows me BACKUP drive with name and HDD without any name. When I open BACKUP it shows me all the previous files and folders, but if I open any of the file it says file doesnot exit. And if I open another drive without a name it doesnot show me anything. And I desperately need the data because I have lot of important things there. So please if somebody knows how to deal with this thing, I'll be very greatful.
Thanks.
Albert

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2

TheParoxysm, on Dec 9, 2008 5:51:43 am GMT

Sounds like data corruption to me.
Could be that it was reading/writing to it when you unplugged it at some point.

You can still recover the data with a data recovery program, and you might even be able to get it to work, but based on what you've told me I don't have enough to come up with an accurate guess as to the problem's source.

   
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3

albertspade, on Dec 9, 2008 8:59:56 am GMT

Thanx for your kind and quick reply TheParoxysm. Will you please tell which data recovery program can be used in this regard. I have even tried to open my hard disk from linux machine but there also its not working. One more thing I want to tell you is my hard disk has not been shown in computer management --> disk management option as well.

   
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4

sarbel.vilo, on Dec 9, 2008 9:26:33 am GMT

Can be a virus as well... if you can do a complete scan of this drive because it can be infected

   
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TheParoxysm, on Dec 9, 2008 4:28:24 pm GMT

You can't scan a corrupted volume. There are no recognizable files to scan.

   
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5

albertspade, on Dec 9, 2008 9:57:27 am GMT

I tried to scan it with kaspersky antivirus. But then it says no files to scan. I can just see the folders and files. If I see their properties, its size is 0 bytes.

   
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6

TheParoxysm, on Dec 9, 2008 4:32:02 pm GMT

Turn your computer off, then unplug the USB cable and then the power to the drive. Restart you computer, plug the power into the hard drive, wait 10 seconds and then plug the USB into the computer. This clears the hard drive buffer. See if the drive shows up in disk management. Before formatting, turn off your antivirus.

Now this should allow it to appear under your disk management.

As for file recovery software...

http://ntfsundelete.com/

Good Luck!

   
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7

albertspade, on Dec 11, 2008 2:50:50 am GMT

Hi TheParoxysm,
Thanks for your suggestion.
I tried as you said but still the same problem.
I can see the files but cant access them, like I see the file named abc.txt in my drive but when I double click it to open it says :
Cannot open the k:\abc.txt file.
Make sure a disk is in he drive you specified.
And when I see it in my computer it shows :
Hard Disk Drives Total Size Free Space
-------------------------
-------------------------
Backup(k:) Local Disk 19.5GB 1.16GB
Local Disk(L:) Local Disk

And in computer management-->Disk management it doesnt show anything at all.
One more thing I want to add is my filesystem type is fat32.

   
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8

TheParoxysm, on Dec 11, 2008 7:56:20 am GMT

The Drive is corrupt then my friend. I'm sorry, you MAY still be able to use it if you format it, and then there's still a possibility of recovering files, BUT as it is now it's corrupt. Good Luck!
If my post was of help, please give me a thumbs u­p to the left, and if this solves it, mark it as­ resolved!

   
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9

 naveenmittal, on Mar 5, 2009 8:40:31 am GMT

Hi TheParoxysm,

I am also facing the same problem as reported above.

On top of this, everytime I plug my USB, i get a very weird kind of noise.

Can I recover any data from the hard-disk without having to pay an obscene amount of money to a data recovery agent?

Thanks,
Naveen

   
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