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Hard Drive Lost... I Think...

C

cwilhelm

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 15, 2007
Messages
89
Running Windows 7.

BIOS recognizes a second hard drive I have but when I get into Windows, it shows the drive as failed. It gives me the option on right-click of reactivating the disk but it does nothing.

Is all of this data lost? Is the drive legitimately failed? Is there anything I can try, including software suggestions, before I have to send this drive off for data recovery?
 
Do you have SMART enabled for the drive w/in the BIOS? If not, enable it. If so, does it say SMART status as good? Also, have you ran any diagnostic tools on it? (most major manufacturers distribute tools to check the integrity of the HDD and they can be ran either in windows or from a boot disc) Try that and post your results. If you have already, and the drives are still good, then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
 
SMART is not mentioned in my BIOS anywhere (Phoenix AwardBIOS v6.00PG)

Here are a couple of screenshots of what I'm dealing with right now.

diag.jpg


compmgmt.jpg


As you can see, it's listed in my disk management but is not assigned a letter. Upon right-click to assign it a letter, the only options that are available are "Properties", which does nothing, and "Change Drive Letter and Paths" which returns the error message "The system cannot find the file specified." In the Western Digital diagnostics software, it is also not listed with a letter and when I try to check the SMART status of any drive, it tells me, "SMART disk information is NOT available for this drive or inaccessible by this program."
 
In the "Data Lifeguard" pic why do the drives say "(USB)" behind the model numbers?

USB doesn't transfer SMART data but are these internal drives?
 
I was just going to ask the same thing.

If the drive in question is an external (which I assume it is), you're not going to get SMART status. Take it out of the case, plug it directly into the MB, and then check. Also, if the SMART status passes, try doing a few things w/ the drive to see if you can access it. If everything is OK, then its probably the controller on the external box. If its not, then run a HDD scan.
 
cwilhelm said:
Weird it may be... but does this mean my drive is dead?
Click to expand...

I dunno.

It looks like you have formatted your storage discs as Dynamic.

Normally discs are partitioned as "Basic" such as your "C" volume.

I'm not familiar enough with dynamic discs to suggest any further steps.
 
You're correct. It's a SATA drive that was initially a Basic partition. Through the disk manager I converted it to a dynamic disk. Didn't realize that would make a difference in anything. Man, I just don't want to send the drive away... too costly...

Can anyone share any experience had with a data recovery company?
 
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