Drive suddenly unformatted?

[KB8WFH]

I have a major problem. I have a drive that suddenly seems to be unformulated. Its a 110 GB drive and was formatted with NTFS under Windows XP (latest updates). I was copying pictures to it from a memory card, which is all I use this drive for. An error occurred specifying the data could not be copies and that the data was lost. No other explanation of the problem or a solution. The data on the memory card was fine. Trying to access the hard drive resulted in a message indicating the drive had not been formatted and asked if I wished to do so now. I obviously said no.

Various repair programs all indicate as the drive manager in XP does that the disk is there, has 110 GB free and is unformatted. I am unable to see any data on it at all.

First any idea how to get my data back? I really can't just let it all go despite the fact that most of it is backed up. It will take days to recover and reload all the data. The drive simply could not have just formatted or lost ALL its format data in 5 seconds. The data has to still be there.

Second, what the heck caused this and how do I avoid it?

Thanks.

 

[gigabyte1024]

Sounds like a fualty disk. You didn't mention how old it is.

Some disks are just bad, though rare it happens to all manufactures.

There are data recovery programs and services, YMMV.

 

[digital_exhaust]

One word. Spinrite.

 

[P3N1X0R]

unformulated drives are the worst

have you caculated the geometry?

might wanna get the manufacturers diag tools so you can reformulate it