Problem with external Harddrive

Hanza

Im having a serious problem with my external hard drive. Its a Maxtor brand. The other day it suddenly prevented me from accessing it, when I try to open it now i get this warning:



The drive is 200G. I enquired about Data recovery but it will cost 800euro which I cant afford.

Does anyone have any advice. I need the files off this drive asap.

Thanks

5uspect

Have you tried it on another machine?
See about getting a Knoppix Linux boot CD and see if you can access it thru that instead of Windows.

Voipjunkie

can you hear if the Hard drive is spinning

You could try taking the Hard drive out of the caddy and putting it in the PC to see if is accessible

Other than that you could try something like spinrite and see if that can get the hard drive working again

workaccount

Most of your data could actually be still there.

There is a table on the drive which tells windows where all the files are. The only way to rebuild the table AFAIK is to format. It may be this table that has corrupted.

Without the table though you should still be able to get all the data off the disk before you format it. Try recuva to get the data back. http://www.recuva.com/ (It's freeware)

In the future you should have another disk as well to backup all the data from the other incase something happens like the hard disk physically breaking.

It could be physically broken now but give the "Recuva" route a go.

I have heard that Maxtor have gotten a little better but in the past they have had reliability issues. I was unfortunate to lose a disk without backup and lost 1K's of work. I would not trust them again. WD or Seagate are very good bets.

Hanza

Thanks for the info.

I contacted a data recovery company and they quoted me at 800euro. Which is insane.

I used Data Doctor, the microsoft data recovery program, and it can see the files, only problem is that its a demo and it wont let you save the files. But at least I know they are there. So the drive is not physically broken and the external box is also functioning.

I have tried other data recovery programs like Un-delete Plus and PC Inspector(which although highly recommended, is very hard to opperate), but ill try that Recuva now.

Thanks for all the help! I really appreciate it!

vox

800 is pretty steep alright for an external drive...

Hanza

Im honestly at my wits end. I cant get the god dam thing working!

How much would you think I should be charged for the data recovery. I have tried every data recovery program I can find and none work except for Data Doctor and that only offers a demo.

Id have no problem paying for it but no where sells it and I need to get the drive working soon. I really starting to loose my temper!

5uspect

Can't you buy it from the website? Its just $69. Thats about €50 or so.
If you don't have a credit card try this:
https://www.3v.ie/