External HD "Bad file signature" - data loss

[SlimPickens]

Greetings. Please excuse the double post. I incorrectly posted in General Hardware when I really need some Tech Support. So...
I own a Plumax PM-525C2-PPS Silver Combo USB 2.0 & Firewire 1394 External Enclosure with a 250G Seagate hard drive in it. For the second time, I have been forced to recover all the data using GetDataBack from the drive because it has become "inaccessible". WinXP Pro Explorer says "the parameter is incorrect". chkdsk says "Unable to determine volume version and state". Partition Magic v8 says "Bad file record signature". I always dismount the drive by clicking the icon in the systray and waiting for the "You may unplug..." notice. The enclosure supports larger drives. I had the drive partitioned with one "logical" partition with NTFS formatting. The first time it crapped out, I had multiple partitions with a primary and NTFS formatting. Am I doing something that's corrupting the drive? Has this happened to anyone else out there? All reasonable suggestions or observations are appreciated. TIA. Regards.

 

[Uncle Bob]

You don't say which connection you are using or whether you've experienced the same problem with both...

Also, I seem to remember there were updates for both USB and Firewire support in the last service pack for XP. So if you haven't installed SP2 then that might be worth trying;

But, as you've experienced problems, I'd suggest you refrain from hot-plugging the drive. I don't think the support is really there in Windows for removable media either on USB or Firewire.

 

[SlimPickens]

Thanks for the reply, Uncle Bob. I use both the USB and Firewire connections; usually Firewire. I'm still a little wary of SP2 but will explore the level of usb/firewire support in that service pack. Regards.