Ok, so I just restarted my computer a little while ago and tried to access my 250GB Maxtor drive (it's a secondary hard drive, used for storage), and its default name has reverted back to "Local Disk" and it won't let me access it, and asks to format it. I haven't formatted it yet, I want to know if I can somehow reverse... whatever the hell happened.
Please help, Hard drive "wiped clean" after restart
- Thread starter Guybrush6
- Start date
Well that bites. Giving you a bump here primarily. I'm not sure what could cause this. Assuming the controller, cables, etc. check out, I would suspect either corruption of the Windows install or something having gone wrong with the disk itself.
plug it into another computer and see if it still asks you to format. If so make a ghost image of it, then try a recovery software on it.
This happened to a friend, a few days ago, while I was at his house, and the feeling really sucks. 
You can try a few things, but if your boot sector's gone, either the drive's completely dead, or if it's still working, you're in for a new format and re-installation.
Here are a few things you can try:
1. If you have access to another working system, connect your drive as a slave to see if it recognizes the drive and can read its contents. If so, you'll be able to save any critical files, even if you can't get the drive to boot again.
2. Download NTFSDOS.EXE. It's a utility you can use to view NTFS drives from a bootable DOS floppy. Boot to the floppy, and see if you can view your drive and files. If so, you will be able to recover your files.
3. If you have a copy of Partition Magic, you can boot to the floppy and use it to see if the drive is still formatted. If it reports an unformatted drive, you've probably lost everything on it.
Events like this are the reason why, when setting up systems for friends (and myself), I always recommend buying hard drives in pairs, mounting one in a mobile rack and using Norton Ghost to clone the drive.
The Ghost copy is a fully running clone of your drive so if your main drive becomes corrupted or virus infected, all you have to do is Ghost back from the backup to the original drive, and you're as good as your last Ghost. If the drive completely fails, swap out the drives and keep going. You'll be out an inexpensive piece of hardware, but you won't have to set up your entire system again.
I Ghost regularly after each virus and spyware sweep and before I install any new program. In my friend's case, it took just a few minutes to restore the drive to his last good Ghost copy, which meant all he lost was three days of e-mail. He now Ghosts his system daily.
It takes around ten minutes to Ghost my 80 GB ATA 133 drive. My friend has a pair of 120 GB SATA drives, and it takes around four minutes to Ghost his setup. In either case, that's a small amount of time for 100% security.
Windows restore points are nowhere near as safe or useful. If, as in your case, your drive becomes corrupted or dies, you have no restore point to go back to, and some viruses attack the restore point information so restoring a drive to an earlier point doesn't get rid of the virus.
Good luck.
You can try a few things, but if your boot sector's gone, either the drive's completely dead, or if it's still working, you're in for a new format and re-installation.Here are a few things you can try:
1. If you have access to another working system, connect your drive as a slave to see if it recognizes the drive and can read its contents. If so, you'll be able to save any critical files, even if you can't get the drive to boot again.
2. Download NTFSDOS.EXE. It's a utility you can use to view NTFS drives from a bootable DOS floppy. Boot to the floppy, and see if you can view your drive and files. If so, you will be able to recover your files.
3. If you have a copy of Partition Magic, you can boot to the floppy and use it to see if the drive is still formatted. If it reports an unformatted drive, you've probably lost everything on it.
Events like this are the reason why, when setting up systems for friends (and myself), I always recommend buying hard drives in pairs, mounting one in a mobile rack and using Norton Ghost to clone the drive.
The Ghost copy is a fully running clone of your drive so if your main drive becomes corrupted or virus infected, all you have to do is Ghost back from the backup to the original drive, and you're as good as your last Ghost. If the drive completely fails, swap out the drives and keep going. You'll be out an inexpensive piece of hardware, but you won't have to set up your entire system again.
I Ghost regularly after each virus and spyware sweep and before I install any new program. In my friend's case, it took just a few minutes to restore the drive to his last good Ghost copy, which meant all he lost was three days of e-mail. He now Ghosts his system daily.
It takes around ten minutes to Ghost my 80 GB ATA 133 drive. My friend has a pair of 120 GB SATA drives, and it takes around four minutes to Ghost his setup. In either case, that's a small amount of time for 100% security.
Windows restore points are nowhere near as safe or useful. If, as in your case, your drive becomes corrupted or dies, you have no restore point to go back to, and some viruses attack the restore point information so restoring a drive to an earlier point doesn't get rid of the virus.
Good luck.
Move it to another system and see what you see. Failing that, run diagnostics and see if the drive is having any issues. There are also some recovery solutions (software) that can be used to reassemble/extract data from hard drives (no names come to mind at the moment).
How long have you had this drive in your system and how much data is on it? Also, what OS and what motherboard make/model? The reason I ask is that for a drive of this capacity you need both the OS and BIOS to support 48-bit LBA. Without this support, data corruption is inevitable. I installed a 250GB HDD in a system a while. The BIOS had the support but the OS wasn't configured properly (W2K SP4) - in the midst of copying data to the drive I lost all partition information and had to wipe the drive and start over (was restoring from backups tho so no data lost). There's a registry value to turn on... "EnableBigLba=1".
How long have you had this drive in your system and how much data is on it? Also, what OS and what motherboard make/model? The reason I ask is that for a drive of this capacity you need both the OS and BIOS to support 48-bit LBA. Without this support, data corruption is inevitable. I installed a 250GB HDD in a system a while. The BIOS had the support but the OS wasn't configured properly (W2K SP4) - in the midst of copying data to the drive I lost all partition information and had to wipe the drive and start over (was restoring from backups tho so no data lost). There's a registry value to turn on... "EnableBigLba=1".
I had the same situation happen with my 200GB Maxtor DM10. I used the Burn-In tool that Maxtor's utility provides and haven't had a problem since.
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