Strange invisible drive problem driving me nuts

[Frank Kavanagh]

hi all this seems like the place to find a solution to this frustrating problem im having with an external drive i have,
ive had this drive a long time and has been reliable, it is a 2.5 sata in a media player usb enclosure with 2 partitions one fat and one is a mac bootable partition anyway thats the history

my problem started when i attached this drive to my linux dreambox to use the pvr recording function after testing some recordings i attached the drive to my macbook and... nothing, the poweron led lights but nothing shows up i tried this on 4 different machines same story

i tryed diskwarrior nothing detected, i used xp device manager and disk management.. nothing

heres the kicker, if i use it as the media player pluged into the tv the fat partition shows up as normal and i can watch the movies stored on there ?

anyone shed some light on this it would be much appriciated

[BlackST]

Many PVR lock drives when connected... (the drive is recognised but cannot access user data) OR the FS is changed.
Should see some more details....

[Frank Kavanagh]

yeah i was thinking it must be whatever files or file system that cause the disk to be recognised by the pc must be corrupted ? the pvr also cannot recognise when the drive is connected, is there any way to replace or repair the file system on the disk, considering i cannot access the disk ?

[BlackST]

If you don't mind loosing data, connect the disk to a PC.
Seen by BIOS ? You are half way.
Use MHDD, choose the disk (BE CAREFUL if you choose YOUR system disk you will perform operations on THAT disk. BETTER THING : USE ANOTHER PC WITHOUT DISK starting MHDD from bootable floppy !!) - issue EID. if PWD is lit the disk is locked then we will think about it later.
No PWD ? You are 3/4 way.

WAHT FOLLOWS IS DESTRUCTIVE FOR DATA : DON'T DO IT IF THE DRIVE CONTAINS IMPORTANT INFO

Issue ERASE (enter)
press enter two times confirming start and end LBA
confirm (yes)
wait.... (the drive will be zero filled).
Usually erasing the 1st 100'000 or 1'000'000 LBAs will do the job, but to be sure let it end (it may take a long time depending on system).
At this point the drive is fully erased and there will be no boot record, no partitions, nothing at all.
You can now re-partition and re-format the drive.

IF you see PWD on or you can't get the drive recognised, the drive is defective or there's something else.

[BlackST]

I forgot one thing : some drives when failing (going to die soon) have strange behaviours, and zerofilling may be the "final call". Seen it on many WDs.

[Frank Kavanagh]

i would like to recover the data if possible, i will connect to the pc to find out if its seen by the bios