I have Samsung S2 Portable 500gb hard drive. It has always worked perfectly fine! Recently when I plug into my computer, I hear the sound that something has been plugged into pc, but nothing is showing? I have tried and succeeded putting other device into this socket (camera) and it operates good as it should! I have also tried installing my Samsung S2 into another computer and it works fine! Please could you advise me - there must be something missing between my Samsung and my computer!

Since that Samsung disk works OK on another PC, this is not a disk or data recovery problem. Also, I have asked for this topic to be moved out of the "technology" section of this board, since you are asking about a specific problem with your equipment, and not any new recovery/repair technology.

Based on your symptoms, this sounds like a possible problem with USB power from some (or all) of your PC's USB ports. Your camera will need much less USB power (in some cases, none at all), for the PC to read its memory card, which is why that works. You may find that using a USB power "Y-cable" (to get USB power from 2 ports on your PC) might help provide enough power for your Samsung disk.

As I explain above, since the disk works OK on another PC, this is not a disk or recovery problem - therefore based on your description of the situation, IMHO you should be focussing on your PC, and in that case, this is not the correct forum.

[Edited to clarify why the technology area of the forum is not really suitable for this thread.]

As you say it works on another computer the the device should be ok.
If your os is windows the check computer management to see if the drive gets detected. If so does it show healthy, raw? What drive letter is it giving it. Chould be you already have that drive letter being used (check my computer) if so just change the drive letter to one thats not being used. Also check device manager to make sure the driver has installed correctly.

If your drive is working ok with another pc then this is not a data recovery issue but a pc/os issue


Loki

Thank you for your replies. Sorry I posted in wrong forum but my not being adequately pc minded which resulted in this. However, a friend has sorted it for me, it was detected via the device manager/disc drives/usb manager. Thanks again for your replies!

Hello I have a similar problem, I've had a samsung portable s2 500gb for a few months now. Yesterday I copied a file onto the hard drive to move onto another computer. When I plugged it into my other computer, windows recognized it but asked me to format it... I was unable to access it and when I tried to run a chkdsk it failed because it couldn't access the disk either. I tried plugging it into all my other computers that were previously able to access its files and they all asked me to format the disk. All the computers recognize the disk when I plug it in but are unable to access it. Disk management shows my external hard drive as healthy and raw, what do I do???

Do not format for sure.

Do you need the data recovered or you just want the drive to work again and losing the data is fine?

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Thanks for the reply, yes I would like to recover my data...

Sorry for the double post, but should I try testdisk??? I've been looking around and it looks like the simplest solution to get my files back and have my external hard drive working again.

Does the drive make any continuous clicking or buzzing sounds? The answer is critical in eliminating the drive has a severe hardware failure.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I don't think so, it's only been humming like its usual self

Firstly I would recommend creating a sector by sector image of the drive & then try & recover from that.

You could try FTK Imager to see if it can access it
http://accessdata.com/support/adownloads#FTKImager

Or you could try a data recovery software like R-Studio

If the MFT is too corrupted then you will lose the folder structure & file names

Hi
Like previous poster my Samsung S2 500Gb is running with blue LED but data cannot be accessed by Windows 7 on modern laptop or by Windows 2000 or Windows XP on older laptop. Have tried two alternative USB_to_USB cables, one with a Y-form to allow extra power.

All versions of Windows detect the drive and give it a new (unconflicting) drive letter
and all versions tell me that I will need to Format the drive in order to use it and prompt me to click on YES button to proceed with formatting (eek!).

Did I make backups - in the early years I did backup to DVD but in recent years I got lazy.

I learned that Samsung drive support is now done by Seagate.
On their website I eventually found a link to their data recovery software (free demo version).
www.seagate.com/services-software/data- ... ..Download Windows PC free trial.
I downloaded and ran this (on Windows 7, modern laptop) and it was able to detect over 11000 files (180Gb) in about 500 folders which I have been putting there over the last few years.
The demo version allowed me to recover some small files (file size limit is 64Kb).
Some of the filenames are slightly corrupted.

So it looks as though I may be able to get some of my files back.
But Seagate want $99 for the full version of the software.
I resent paying somebody to recover from (what I judge to be) a defect in their product.
So I will seek and try some free software first.

Hi,

Firstly its not a defect with Samsung this can happen to any make of drive. If the partition boot sector or mbr gets corrupted then it can display the messages asking to be formatted. This can be caused for instance by disconnecting the drive incorrectly ie while it was writing data or not by using the safely disconnect wizard amongst other things. But what ever you do dont format it.

As you say the seagate software managed to find files & folders then it could be a corrupt mbr or boot sector.
You could try testdisk to check or manually check it in winhex if you have the know how but remember that with DIY comes risks. As you say you want to try free software first try searching google for "free data recovery software" their are some out there.
Data recovery software or companies for that matter are arround because people forget to do back ups. $99 for a data recovery software like R-Studio (which is recommended here over & over again) as an example that recovers say your priceless family photos is not a lot to ask concidering the time, effort & knowledge that went in to programming it + you get to keep it for future use if you need it again.
Just out of curiousity what price would you put on your data?


Loki

Loki,

many thanks for your comments.
Yes I have been stupid not to back up. Lesson learned hopefully.

I agree $99 is not unreasonable.
What seems unreasonable to me is that HDD manufacturers don't provide such S/W free of charge to people who purchase their products.
I guess they might think it would put prospective customers off
(like a sky-diving school offering free-wheelchairs to new customers).

If I could be sure that my problem would be sorted then yes I would pay the $99 willingly.

Trouble is there are many sharks and cowboys out there offering products and services of dubious quality.
It is getting harder and harder to find good ones.
Thank God for forums such as this one.

Anyway, I have found and tried TestDisk. It reports problems with the FAT.
I dont want to get into FATs & boot sector stuff right now because it hurts my brain ( I was once a programmer but never a systems manager)
Luckily TestDisk comes with PhotoRec which is currently recovering files as I write (4 hours gone and 4 hours estimated remaining).
It recovers files with their filetypes.
Unfortunately it doesnt recover the folder structure, dates and filenames - but that stuff is secondary to me.

When Photorec is finished I will re-assess the situation.
Perhaps then I will decide to shell out for better software or services.

Best advice would be to first do a sector by sector image of the drive. Then do your recovery, this way you will have a back up if something goes wrong.

You mention that testdisk says fat is wrong?
Is the fat backup boot sector ok? If not try rebuild bs
If this works you should have your folder names and strucure.

Loki