Weird Hard Drive Problem

[derekbannatyne]

I'm having another problem with a hard drive; I had it in one of my computers, but took it out because Windows wasn't loading properly. I have it now in an external hard drive enclosure (which I've tested and works), but when I go to open the hard drive it says Drive F is not formatted. This can't be true since I just took it out of my other computer (where it had information on it), and I haven't formatted it. I've also tried connecting it to another IDE cable and that caused the computer not to boot windows. Any help? Thanks.

 

[thndr143]

when I go to open the hard drive it says Drive F is not formatted. This can't be true since I just took it out of my other computer, and I haven't formatted it. Any help? Thanks.

umm..try formatting it.

 

[derekbannatyne]

Sorry I guess I wasn't clear, I need to get the information off of it before I format it.

 

[eth00]

Perhaps try it in a case without being in that external box. If its the same problem may be corrupt enough windows cannot read it.

One final option would be booting to knoppix linux and seeing if it can open the drive, it can be more forgiving at times.

 

[koopaGG]

I found this amazing program the other day called Active Partition Recovery. Check that out and run a superscan on the drive, you might be able to salvage the partition.

 

[derekbannatyne]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'm going to give them a try once I get the computer set up with 2x 160gb drives in RAID1 (I've learned not to just trust a single hard drive). Hopefully all my data is recoverable.