Drive not formatted error

[21stHermit]

My PC's second internal HDD gave me a not formatted error. The drive is formatted NTFS yet in Disk Management it shows no format. DM says the drive is healthy.

It's a 1.5TB WD that's about 4-YO and has worked flawless for the 4-years. Had a minor thunderstorm and I turned off the computer and switched off the master inline switch. 99% sure the drive was fine when I powered down.

I'm running Win XP SP3. I used the drive extensively this morning creating text output from my mapping software and compiling those files into binary.

How do I recover?

Thanks

 

[Elixer]

You should first clone the drive to another.
Then you use testdisk (or something like that) on the clone, to see if it can recover anything.

If it can't, then, you either pay lots of $$$ to recover it via pros, or you spend some more $$$ to make backups of all important data from this point on.

 

[21stHermit]

I'm 95% backed up on my important files. I usually back up at the end of a big project, so I was a few days from that back up.

Is there no way to recover the last few weeks of files?

 

[Elixer]

I already told you how to go about it... not sure what more you need ?

 

[John Connor]

You can try for free EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. Or buy Ontrack EasyRecovery Enterprise. Do not write to the disk until you have recovered!

Is this a blue WD BTW? Red or black is what you want. I personally go SSD anymore, but for large storge capicity I go platter and that be Hitachi.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175089-who-makes-the-most-reliable-hard-drives

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089...eals-the-most-reliable-hard-drive-makers.html

 

[21stHermit]

You can try for free EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. Or buy Ontrack EasyRecovery Enterprise. Do not write to the disk until you have recovered!

I tried both EaseUS and Find and Mount. Both revealed the directories and/or files.
I question the FREE of EaseUS, seems to work by revealing the files you want then says "Do you want to recover?" Time to pay, ~$70. Find and Mount found the directory and allowed me to "Mount" it to any letter A-Z other than the existing letter K. I tried L but that didn't persist through a power cycle. Start over!

Perhaps my root question: Is it possible to recover the directory tree OR must I copy the files, then reformat the drive, then rebuild the HDD directory?

Is this a blue WD BTW? Red or black is what you want. I personally go SSD anymore, but for large storge capicity I go platter and that be Hitachi.

Actually a WD green, I have it powered down via the OS most of the time and only use it infrequently for big map data sets. Yesterday was one of those days.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[John Connor]

I tried both EaseUS and Find and Mount. Both revealed the directories and/or files.
I question the FREE of EaseUS, seems to work by revealing the files you want then says "Do you want to recover?" Time to pay, ~$70.

Yeah, that kinda sucks, but if you value your data and it's worth the $70 it would be cheaper than sending the drive into the pros to recover.

 

[Elixer]

Yeah, that kinda sucks, but if you value your data and it's worth the $70 it would be cheaper than sending the drive into the pros to recover.

If they want the data back, without further risk of damaging what is already on the drive, then the only option is to buy a new HD, clone over the old one, and finally, run testdisk (free) to get the data back. (As I wrote)

If that can't recover it, then odds are, that they will have to send it to the pros anyway.

 

[phis6]

Find and Mount found the directory and allowed me to "Mount" it to any letter A-Z other than the existing letter K. I tried L but that didn't persist through a power cycle. Start over!

Perhaps my root question: Is it possible to recover the directory tree OR must I copy the files, then reformat the drive, then rebuild the HDD directory?

You can also try Partition Wizard Minitool partition recovery. But as suggested by Elixer, it is much better to clone that drive and do the recovery procedure from the clone that you got.

 

[21stHermit]

Don't understand how just the very top part of the directory can fail yet all the data and tree of the drive are intact. That now happened a second time. Drive is now toast.

I used Find and Mount to access the drive read only, everything appeared intact. Moved all files to another drive, reformatted (6 hours) ran chkdsk another 6-hrs and rebuilt the drive. This morning I booted and the drive is showing "not formatted".

I need that drive because my compiler is locked to that specific hardware. But, as soon as it failed again, I realized I can keep the drive but have no data on it. Solves that problem.

I'd like to understand what's happening, but lacking that, the solution will suffice.