Hard drive broke but really want to access it

[hackmole]

My second (slave) hard drive doesn't show up in Windows xp explorer nor Device Manager but it it is being detected fine in bios on bootup and shows the name of it - Maxtor (My boot drive is a Western Digital). It doesn't make sense because if something was really wrong with the Maxtor drive doesn't bios usually not show the drive or say something like Drive Failed? If Bios detects the drive fine shouldn't that mean it is working? Could there be something else wrong with the drive? Like maybe some circuit or maybe the partitions got erased.

I remember that chkdsk ran and erased a few sectors on one of the 7 partitions I had created for that 60gig Maxtor drive (before I stopped it) including a file named bootex, and after that the drive was no longer visible in Windows Explorer.

Maybe it erased a sector with the partition format on it. Could that be repaired with maybe Partition Magic or some partition repair program so that I can access my files.

I am also sure my jumpers are set right because I put in another 2 gig Maxtor drive with the same jumper settings and it worked fine. If the jumpers were wrong, I don't think the drive would be detected in bios.

It just doesn't make sense since the drive is being detected in bios.

Note: I also froze the drive overnight and then tried it again and had no change in results. I also ran a program called "GetDataBack," but it didn't detect the drive.

 

[tommo123]

maybe the partition is hosed only? if it's being detected in the bios then hopefully it's physically ok.

i've used a program to recover partitions a fair few times (external caddy screwed up my partition a few times before i figured out what it was doing) and it worked well for me - can't remember what it's called now though. will post the name later when i'm home. might be of some help.

is it detected in drive/disk management? whatever it was called in xp? if so, and it's 'raw' or some such then it's just a screwy partition and should be fixable (hopefully)

 

[Blain]

I remember that chkdsk ran and erased a few sectors on one of the 7 partitions I had created for that 60gig Maxtor drive

Why would you create 7 partitions on a 60GB HD?

 

[ElenaP]

What is the exact model name of the Maxtor drive as displayed by BIOS during startup? Certain Maxtor models would revert to displaying a production series name if there is a problem with the firmware.

 

[FishAk]

Try booting into it with Linux. If you can, pull your stuff off it, than format and try again with Windows.

 

[tommo123]

what worked for me several times is :-Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional

might be worth a shot

 

[RebateMonger]

Try booting into it with Linux. If you can, pull your stuff off it, than format and try again with Windows.

I wouldn't recommend continuing to use any Maxtor disk of that era. There's a reason why Maxtor got sold and all of their consumer designs dumped. I've got ten-year-old disks that still work, but none of them are Maxtors.