Hi, recently I made a mistake interrupting an automated disk check, and now Windows cannot access it. It's an internal 250Gb SATA in an external USB enclosure to store data, a single-partition NTFS in a Vista system. One common issue with this USB setup is that the drive could never be "safely removed" from within Windows. I would need to do a complete shut-down if I need to disconnect the drive. A few times I just switch the power off from the drive and disconnect. Perhaps this caused the automated chkdsk in the first place.

From within Disk Management - Computer Management, Vista identifies the drive as 232Gb RAW (healthy, active, primary partition) with 0 bytes used/free space. Chkdsk now cannot be evoked due to Windows not being able to access the drive. However using a third-party programs (such as EASEUS Partition Master), the drive is identified as 188Gb used, 44Gb free (as it should be), NTFS, active, primary. None of the programs can automatically identify that there is an error and propose the correct solution, so for most I would have to do a trial and error.

I'm guessing this tells me my data are still intact, so I just need to find a way to repair the file system from RAW back to NTFS, a way so that Windows can read the drive again. I'm opting to repair rather than recovering the files, but as a last resort than I would need to find a way of copying the 200Gb++ to another media. Mind you that this is not a system drive, just for data storage. I tried my best searching the net but most is about repairing boot issues as this is not the case here.

I would appreciate any help, thanks.

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Budy

First off stop playing around. Second clone your drive to another one work from the clone on this one. Use a recovery program such as Get Data Back NTSF or FAT depending on your file system. This is not free and you will need to pay for it. Once you have your data back you can reformat this drive, move your data back onto it and go from there. This should not be too hard to acomplish on this one if you clone your drive first.

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Iorana Haraharaini

The problem is logical not physical most probably and this is partially good - there can be bad sectors but this is not a real problem. See poehere's advice.

Yes, but I was still hoping for a fix as oppose to a recovery as I do not have a 2nd 250Gb lying around. I would not have gone through the trouble if in the end I could just format everything. Can you recommend a reliable "free" recovery program?

No and you are dealing with a defective filesystem and "maybe" with somehow defective surface. You can't have the egg, the chicken and the money to buy both.

P.S. if you are thinking about HDD Degenerator, it is not a good idea.

WOW drives are so cheap where you are just go get one or borrow one from somebody to do this with. If you want your data back this is how to do it.

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Iorana Haraharaini

Do you have 250GB of free space on your internal drive?

If so, you could use ddrescue or dd_rescue to clone your external drive to an image file. Otherwise, if there are no bad sectors, you may be able to use your preferred cloning software instead.

Whether or not you have any free space, you could always examine your external drive in read-only mode. The first things to check are the partition table and boot sector. I suspect these are OK, but you could use Microsoft's Sector Inspector to confirm this.

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SecInspect.zip

Extract the above archive to the one folder and execute the SIrun.bat file. The procedure will generate a report file named SIout.txt.