Help may have lost a hard drive!

[merc68]

I'll try to make this as short as possible. The Flight simulator X demo hosed my windows install. Restore points and the repair console didn't help. I couldn't even uninstall the program because nothing would come up in the remove software tab The machine would lock up in windows after a couple of minutes no matter what I was doing. It had been a while since I did a fresh install so I figured what the heck, might as well start fresh. I unhooked my extra hard drive so there would be no accidents as always. Not that I ever formatted the wrong drive. I'm just finishing up my install and reconnected my 2nd drive and windows says the drive is corrupted and unreadable. Keep in mind that this drive is only a few months old and was working perfectly until this point. No funny sounds or anything like that. In system managment it show as an unfromatted drive and completely empty. Any ideas on what to do or software to try to recover the data on this drive would be very helpful.

p.s. I didn't install the nvidia ide driver because I've heard so may bad things about it.

Specs
Amd 3800+ dual core
2gb kingston ddr 400
asus A8N sli deluxe with 6.86 chipset drivers
Windows XP sp2
2x evga 7900gt's in sli
lg dvd burner
1 seagate 250gb sata drive
1 wd 250gb sata this is the one with the troubles.
both drives are connected to the nvidia sata controller but not in raid.

 

[merc68]

nobody has any ideas?

 

[Chernobyl1]

If your machine is clocked, declock it.
Try a different cable for data and power.
Download the diagnostic tools from the manufacturers website and see what it says.

If all else fails run Spinrite or HDD Regenerator.

 

[merc68]

I tried other cables and the WD diagnostics, no help. According to everything it isn't formatted. I tried the trial version of one of the programs mentioned and it found all the data. I just need to get another HD to move it to. Does anybody know if there is software available to repair the format of a disk without deleting it. This all happened after Christmas shopping yesterday so I'm a little short of cash.

 

[InCogneato]

try your hdd on a different computer or external enclosure. also...

some friends HDDs have crashed and they put it in the freezer... and it worked.... im not telling you to do this because i have not done it myself but i am bringing it up in case someone else has had this experience and maybe they can shed some light as to why this actually works... wait until others give feedback because i am completely unaware of anything associated with that trick

i would also try taking your HDD apart and using pieces from other HDDs to maybe root out the troubled area/component, but thats just me

i would also try and see if your HDD is able to be read on linux. it recognizes drives with windows partitions but you just cant mess with them for the most part. you actually can if you really want to but theres some issues with it working properly and you could lose data


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just throwing some ideas out there, cuz i know how frustrating it is to not be able to access an HDD or partition.

 

[BOLt11]

try your hdd on a different computer or external enclosure. also...

some friends HDDs have crashed and they put it in the freezer... and it worked.... im not telling you to do this because i have not done it myself but i am bringing it up in case someone else has had this experience and maybe they can shed some light as to why this actually works... wait until others give feedback because i am completely unaware of anything associated with that trick

i would also try taking your HDD apart and using pieces from other HDDs to maybe root out the troubled area/component, but thats just me

i would also try and see if your HDD is able to be read on linux. it recognizes drives with windows partitions but you just cant mess with them for the most part. you actually can if you really want to but theres some issues with it working properly and you could lose data


--

just throwing some ideas out there, cuz i know how frustrating it is to not be able to access an HDD or partition.

good ideas. i've heard of doing the freezing thing, too. i forget its application, though. not sure about bad disk sectors.

also, run pc-check and/or drive fitness test (DFT) on your computer to determine if there are any other hardware problems that are causing problems. could be an IRQ resource conflict, though thats a stretch given that IRQs are assigned by the BIOS and evidently that wasn't something that was reset or anything before this happened (and i've never heard of windows mixing up stuff like that). try loading fail-safe BIOS defaults and see if it works (make sure you fix the BIOS time before booting, as sometimes that causes problems with windows if it is too far off). try booting from something like ubuntu from the live disc (no installation necessary) and see if it reads anything. it's got a partition editor in there too. as long as there isn't an operating system installed on the drive, linux should read the disk properly. did you somehow unplug the drive which the pc was on? remember ide/ata drives aren't hot-swappable like sata can be. the ultimate boot CD has some tools you might find handy. download it and try it out.

good luck, this sounds like a very sucky situation.

-BOLt

EDIT: oh, don't take apart your drive. don't void the warranty, as it sounds like you can recover the data as a worst possible scenario (as opposed to making it work as is). if you can't fix it, secure the data, DBAN it, and send it back to the manufacturer and get a new one. do not take it apart!