fullgrownnut
Member
External Hard Drive Crash - PLEASE HELP!
I was starting my computer today (that has Vista), and during the start up process, a black screen came up stating that there was an error opening up my external hard drive and it was checking for errors. After it finally booted up, I went to open the hard drive files, and it was totally BLANK! I then restarted the computer, and still the hard drive is EMPTY! I had ALL my important files in there!
The ONLY thing that looks promising is that when I go to Start then to Computer, it shows the hard drive there, and it still shows that 43GB are free of 111GB of storage (same info shows by right clicking on it and going to Properties). Why would it show this if nothing is on the hard drive anymore? Is there ANYWAY to recover these files again you think???? I NEED those files!!!! Remember that the hard drive STILL PHYSICALLY WORKS. It's just that I cannot access the files on my pc at the time for some reason. Please help. Thanks.
Update:
A friend gave me an idea, and that was to do a custom scan with my anti-virus to see if it would scan files in the external hard drive if they were still in there. Well, my Nortons scanned the hard drive and after several minutes, it scanned just over 10,000 files (that's an accurate count), which means that those files are still in there, right? The only thing is that when it gives you a preview of the files that are being scanned, the file names are not appearing like usual, and it's just numbering the files and the scan allocated them with its own naming/numbering system. So evidently the names of the files are not being detected, but the anti-virus did in fact detect all the files in the external hard drive.
It seems to me that maybe my computer itself is not reading/communicating with the hard drive anymore? I checked for updates on the driver for it, and it said that the driver was up to date. The bottom line is that those files are apparently still in there, but by conventional means of abstracting those files through my computer is not working. What should I do? Thanks for any help.
Update #2:
I called a computer tech and he told me to use the Vista utility tool to check and fix errors on the hard drive by going to Properties of the drive and then selecting the Tools tab. I ran the full error check, it said that there were errors that were identified and fixed, however it's still saying that the drive is empty. I KNOW that those files are in there. It's just that I cannot access them from my computer for some reason.
Also, I have a nephew who is VERY good at this stuff, and I talked to him just a few moments ago. He says that it seems to him that my "Partition Data" is corrupt, but my physical data is still there. Does this make any sense? Please help. Thanks.
Update #3:
Here's a screen shot of the properties of the external hard drive to prove that the files are still occupying their normal space (but when u explore into it, it says the drive is empty):
I was starting my computer today (that has Vista), and during the start up process, a black screen came up stating that there was an error opening up my external hard drive and it was checking for errors. After it finally booted up, I went to open the hard drive files, and it was totally BLANK! I then restarted the computer, and still the hard drive is EMPTY! I had ALL my important files in there!
The ONLY thing that looks promising is that when I go to Start then to Computer, it shows the hard drive there, and it still shows that 43GB are free of 111GB of storage (same info shows by right clicking on it and going to Properties). Why would it show this if nothing is on the hard drive anymore? Is there ANYWAY to recover these files again you think???? I NEED those files!!!! Remember that the hard drive STILL PHYSICALLY WORKS. It's just that I cannot access the files on my pc at the time for some reason. Please help. Thanks.
Update:
A friend gave me an idea, and that was to do a custom scan with my anti-virus to see if it would scan files in the external hard drive if they were still in there. Well, my Nortons scanned the hard drive and after several minutes, it scanned just over 10,000 files (that's an accurate count), which means that those files are still in there, right? The only thing is that when it gives you a preview of the files that are being scanned, the file names are not appearing like usual, and it's just numbering the files and the scan allocated them with its own naming/numbering system. So evidently the names of the files are not being detected, but the anti-virus did in fact detect all the files in the external hard drive.
It seems to me that maybe my computer itself is not reading/communicating with the hard drive anymore? I checked for updates on the driver for it, and it said that the driver was up to date. The bottom line is that those files are apparently still in there, but by conventional means of abstracting those files through my computer is not working. What should I do? Thanks for any help.
Update #2:
I called a computer tech and he told me to use the Vista utility tool to check and fix errors on the hard drive by going to Properties of the drive and then selecting the Tools tab. I ran the full error check, it said that there were errors that were identified and fixed, however it's still saying that the drive is empty. I KNOW that those files are in there. It's just that I cannot access them from my computer for some reason.
Also, I have a nephew who is VERY good at this stuff, and I talked to him just a few moments ago. He says that it seems to him that my "Partition Data" is corrupt, but my physical data is still there. Does this make any sense? Please help. Thanks.
Update #3:
Here's a screen shot of the properties of the external hard drive to prove that the files are still occupying their normal space (but when u explore into it, it says the drive is empty):
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