Help with my External Enclosure

[DeathscytheHELL]

When I got my new computer in Feb 2006, I took my 250GB and put it into an IDE-USB Adaptec External Enclosure (g:/)

Everything has worked fine, until tonight.

Friday 1st, I installed Ventrilo, to play a MMO, with Friends.
Well Doing that screwed up my sound, something to do with Direct Sound Drivers.
So I restored back to before Ventrilo messed up the sound drivers.
In doing so, Two Bogus floppy Drives A:/ and B:/ appeared, and I no longer had an Icon for my Volume contol, so I restored back even further.
Since G:/ was turned off, I got the usual "This won't affect G:/, since it's not there" warning.

That Still didn't work, So I got online and looked up the answer, which was "uninstall the unidentified Microsoft Sound Controller" so I did, and while at it I uninstalled A:/ and B:/
And my Active Desktop was messed up.
So I fixed a couple things, even using my G:/ Drive.

Then I had to reboot again, this time my computer no longered accessed my G:/ drive.
And in fact would stop working for about 5 minutes, when looking for it, whether in My Computer, Maintenance, or even in the Safely Remove Hardware tool.
But reacted fine before, and after the chime for plugging in a USB device and removing it.

It's also strange Because while Hardware detects the Mass Storage Device, and it's listed under Harddrives as a USB HDD, it doesn't register on MY COMPUTER, or under DISK MANAGEMENT.

Occasionally I can make it pop up under My computer, when I shut it down.
In which case, it's no longer Labled, and no longer has a Volume.

Is it the HDD? the Enclosure? My computer?
And can anyone tell me an easy way to Recover what's on there? It's ten years of stuff that's on there.

 

[acemcmac]

It's probably the enclosure. If you are comfortable working inside your PC, I'd suggest opening the enclosulre, removing the hard drive, and after making sure that your jumper configuration will make sense, drop it into a desktop PC. You should immediatley get access to all of your files again, just as plug and play as the enclosure was. Then, go buy a DVD burner and MAKE BACKUPS.

 

[DeathscytheHELL]

When Plugged into an IDE cable, after checking BIOS to make sure everything is hooked up right.
My Computer still hangs just past the Windows Splash screen and before the desktop kicks in.

Also get a 3-5 Minute hang when checking My Computer.
But rest of system is fine.
When I check Admin/disk Management, the 250GB shows up as Healthy, But with no file system and empty.

And doesn't show up under My Computer even though it's been given a Letter in Disk Management.

I guess its time to start lookng for Data recovery programs.
Most of the important stuff is backed up already.
But I just got done downloading a lot of Dubbed Anime Torrents, that took forever to dl.
Which is what I am worried about.

 

[acemcmac]

Originally posted by: DeathscytheHELL
When Plugged into an IDE cable, after checking BIOS to make sure everything is hooked up right.
My Computer still hangs just past the Windows Splash screen and before the desktop kicks in.

Also get a 3-5 Minute hang when checking My Computer.
But rest of system is fine.
When I check Admin/disk Management, the 250GB shows up as Healthy, But with no file system and empty.

And doesn't show up under My Computer even though it's been given a Letter in Disk Management.

I guess its time to start lookng for Data recovery programs.
Most of the important stuff is backed up already.
But I just got done downloading a lot of Dubbed Anime Torrents, that took forever to dl.
Which is what I am worried about.

You really really need to be backing that stuff up. I have a Raid 1 for my torrents. I know it's not the best, but it's better than nothing...

 

[Fraggable]

Plan on paying about $30 for any data recovery software worth having, though I bet it won't be hard to recover. It doesn't sound like it was formatted accidentally or anything, maybe just an index missing.

 

[DeathscytheHELL]

Recent developements are:
The Disk is now readable, no file system
CHKDSK doesn't work past 25%

I have tried recovery with PC Inspector, a free download from Downloads.com
Most stuff can be found, however large chunks are missing, and most can't be recovered by PC Inspector.

Any Suggestions on another recovery program?

--
Disk is still unreadable, good news though.
The information on this disk was origonally on a 120gb drive that was part of the computer I replaced early this year. I had copied the info to an External Enclosure with a 250GB harddrive to provide back up, instead of 20DVDs.
I never got around to erasing things off of the 120GB though... so it was all still there.
Not much is missing. Go me!

 

[Fraggable]

GetDataBack

Every occasion I've had to recover data, that has worked for me. I think it's $30, I could be wrong. The trial will show you what's recoverable.