External Hard Drive Error?

[rpf717rpf]

I have an external hard drive which I was copying data to, there was an error and I turned off the drive. After a reboot, the drive is no longer recognized on multiple computers. I then used a disk diagnostic program "easy recovery pro" and ran full diagnostic tests, which state there is nothing wrong with the drive. I removed the drive from the external inclosure - its a WD 200 IDE, and plugged it into my MB on an existing system.

On startup the drive spins up and is recognized by the bios. Upon starting Win XP, the device manager states the drive is installed and working properly, however, when I click on "my computer" the drive does not show up. When I run Partition magic, the drive shows up as "Disk three", but instead of showing the file system type as NTFS, it states "unallocated".

the drive has a lot of precious data on it that I was about to back up

Any ideas for what might be causing this issue?

Thanks in advance!

 

[amdskip]

Most likely you will need to purchase a recovery program and try recovering the data with it hooked up to your motherboard.

I have had great luck with this: http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

 

[rpf717rpf]

So the "easy recovery pro" is a recovery program, but it seems to be struggling with my drive, it can find most of the data but not as a NTFS files, but rather "raw" data, so it lits only the file extensions with random names. it also seems to miss a lot. I just downloaded the trial of the program you suggested, and it seems that it might be doing a better job.

I hate to buy another program since I already have one, but my hand may be forced. i'll post my results

 

[irishScott]

The partition table might be corrupted.

Try this:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Saved my a$$ after a failed linux install fvcked up my MBR.

 

[rpf717rpf]

Well after using file scavenger, much of the disk was "recovered", however, as my bad luck would have it all the files that I really cared about seem to be ruined?

At this point is there anything a professional would have to offer? Or would they likely just run one of these programs and have the same results (but charge me more money)?

 

[sieistganzfett]

try getdataback for ntfs from runtime.org, you try it out for free, if you think the files will be ok and everything looks right in the free versionpay for it put in the reg info, and then recover the files.

 

[mancunian]

Originally posted by: irishScott
The partition table might be corrupted.

Try this:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Saved my a$$ after a failed linux install fvcked up my MBR.

I can second this, rescued about 160 Gigs of data using this tool.

I also agree with Scott that the partition table might be corrupt.