save my hd

[peterpro]

So, i have a dell laptop, 9200
it's hibernating.
i had an exteranl 250 plugged in.
I swapped out the usb for my other 250
when it came up
i had to reactivate the drive in computer management.
it wrote the first drives index onto the second
so now my second drive reads half full, and shows no files.

basially can't do anything with it, all the files are not showing up.

does anyone know how to get the pointer list back?

also it wants to convert the disk to a basic disk.
i'm afriad that wont help either becuase it's already messed up by the lap to.
any ideas
help!!
thanks
peter

these are two exernal drives, and one laptop.
the first drive works.. the second drive works, but doesn't show files anymore, and shows inaccurate free and used storage (basically it's showing the free and used from the first dirve.

 

[jonesthewine]

why did you swap drives while the laptop was hibernating?

 

[everman]

You swapped the drives with the power on?...

 

[larry89]

yes it is unbelieveable that you swapped the hard drivers with the power on, maybe you can try a fresh install of windows xp using the original usb hd?

 

[minofifa]

Originally posted by: everman
You swapped the drives with the power on?...

what's wrong with changing USB devices while the power is on?

what about a master boot record reformat? I don't know much about them but i was told to do one when my hard drives were messing up.

 

[peterpro]

you can unplug a usb cable from a comptuer.
usualyl with no problems

i simply unplugged the usb from teh first drive.
and plugged the second hd into the same usb slot.
then un hibernated.
this seems to have screwed the hd.

what a is a master boot record, and if you reformat that, will it reread the contents

the question here is does anyone know what to do with this kind of situation.
thanks
peter

does anyone know of a program that will copy the cyclinders identically to another drive so i can try to do data recovery without using the original drive?
thanks
peter

 

[stevty2889]

Hibernating copies the contents of your ram, to your hard drive..so that when it comes back up it will be doing what it was prior to hibernating..sounds like it copied the files to your external drive, then you swapped drives while it was still in hibernation, so it corrupted the second drive and filled it with the data that was in memory..I wouldn't try that again. I don't really have any suggestions as to how to get the data back, other than what the others have suggested.

 

[Jiggz]

Even if both ext hdd are plugged in you cannot access any of the files? Try plugging them at the same time on the laptop and then run chkdsk on the ext hdd.