OT - More Hard Drive questions

Stonefield wrote on 10/30/2006, 2:10 PM
Hey guys,

Here's another hard drive question for ya. You were so helpful on that last one....and this is a different drive btw.

Ok, here's the thing...

Newish drive. Maxtor DeamondMax 10 series, 300gb. I put it in a Nexstar 2 external enclosure. Both firewire and USB2 ports. Formatted fine and loaded up footage, loops, stock photos, etc. Worked GREAT as an instant access media drive. I barely used it and turned it off after each use.

Then suddenly ( sound familiar I'm sure ) It doesn't seem to work...."The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable"

So it show's up in windows explorer but gives me that error when I try to access it. I go into Control Panel/Admin Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management - and it shows it there all Healthy. And it shows % Free is at 100. ( ??? )

It looks just like a fresh drive waiting to be formatted. I get the feeling that I might HAVE to re-format that drive. There's not real data loss, just the huge amount of time spent getting things on there.

So why all of a sudden can I not access this drive ? I sure didn't reformat it. I downloaded the Maxtor PowerMax tool, but when that started up, it wouldn't see the drive, only the two internal ones so I couldn't do any diagnostics on it. But again, it shows up in Windows Explorer, and the disk management screen. Is there a free data recovery software I can try before reformatting this ?

Thanks again,

Stan

Comments

TimTyler wrote on 10/30/2006, 2:29 PM
If you disconnect power to the external drive, but keep the data connection to your computer, does it still show up in explorer?
Stonefield wrote on 10/30/2006, 5:06 PM
If you disconnect power to the external drive, but keep the data connection to your computer, does it still show up in explorer?


...No..
riredale wrote on 10/30/2006, 8:18 PM
Put the drive on an internal connection, to see if it's the drive or the electronics in the external box that are messed up. For that matter, you can try to put it in another PC.

Worst case, I'd suggest "Spinrite," which has a remarkable record of repairing hard disks.
Serena wrote on 10/30/2006, 10:29 PM
Taking the HD out of the box is a good idea. If that doesn't produce sufficient joy then GetDataBack will do an analysis of what can be recovered and I'd do that before considering reformating. You have to buy before it will actually recover the data, but at least by then you know that you'll get something back.
MH_Stevens wrote on 10/31/2006, 4:34 AM
Will Windows run "check disc for errors" or defrag it?
tlsmith083 wrote on 11/3/2006, 6:49 AM
I had a similar problem with an external drive. I tried everything, but one day accidentally had it turned on when I booted up the computer, and the generic disk fixer included in XP saw it was corrupted and fixed it.

So my lesson learned was turn on the external drive before turning on your computer, see if it recognizes and fixes the corrupted drive.

Tom
UlfLaursen wrote on 11/3/2006, 9:37 PM
I would also try and access it from inside the PC as well - might be the interface in the box that is broke. Is there enough cooling (a fan) inside the box?

I had a 120 gig WD disk die on me - probably because of a bad ext.box without enough cooling with a freinds holiday captured on - too bad :-( But they are shure nice theese external drives. I have several PC's and it is great to copy files to different PC's from the same source.

/Ulf
Bob Greaves wrote on 11/3/2006, 11:55 PM
When using any removable external storage device you must use the recommended process each time you disconnect it. If you simply turn it off and disconnect it, you will corrupt the device.

If the device is connected by USB, for example, you must select the USB device removal icon in the system tray and from the menu select safe disconnect. The computer will tell you when it is safe to disconnect.