Data Corruption?

[IIvII]

So I'm building a new computer and the day I plan on moving my 1Tb external hard drive data over to the 2Tb the drives stop working. I have a Fantom External in a raid setup(2 500gb WD's), I've owned it i'd say about two years. I put the external in the car to use at my friends house and I kept getting errors the the drive could not be recognized. At first I thought it was just hit computer and maybe it was a software issue of some sort. I thought it was odd because the drive has always been plug n play wherever I used it. We tried it in his wife's laptop and still the same issue. Finally I went home and I also have the same issue.

The hard drive powers up and I can feel the drives spinning up but once I get the error on the taskbar "USB Device Not Recognized One of the USB devices attached to this commputer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it......" I know it isn't the USB cable because I have tested that already. I thought maybe during the car ride something inside the external casing came loose so I voided the warranty and checked all the sata connections inside. Everything seems in order. It is my belief that data on the drive has corrupted it. I'm afraid something was either being copied or deleted on the drive that I didn't notice when it was disconnected. Naturally I tried all the common sense fixes: Tried different USB ports, fooled around in device manager (comes up unknown device) etc etc.

The question is, how do I repair the drive without reformatting if said drive cannot be read? I've heard there is software out there that can do it but I don't know where to go. The expense isn't too big of an issue to me but I'd like to do it myself. I have 1Tb of data that I cannot lose.

Thanks in advance

- Mike

 

[pyr02k1]

Did you try a linux live cd? You might have luck on that path. If not, pull the drives and put them in the system and try both Windows and Linux (Make sure to click CANCEL on the windows format dialog if it appears, do not click Continue, or you might just be boned). If the drive is fine in Linux, backup the data, attempt reformating the drive and try again. If it works fine in the system, then the external enclosure is bad and should be replaced. Argue to no end with the Manf. about ignoring the voided warranty as you needed your data. You'll get someone to agree to it one or 2 managers in. They'll want the drive back though, so youll need that backup in any case.

Hope that helps, good luck
--pyr0