Good morning. I woke up a few mornings ago to a "S.M.A.R.T - Failure" on my primary HDD (see thread a few posts down) So much for advanced warning. the drive was dead as dead - not complete booting to windows etc. I have since replaced the drive and reinstalled my OS to get back up and running ASAP. I do have a few questions:

I didn't loose a lot of data from my primary HDD (I do back up - yeah!) but there are things I would like to snag from the pile of data just to make my life a little easier - things like FireFox Bookmark backup.... and a few config files that map the backups from my backup utility software.

I have placed my HDD into a external enclosure and the drive after some time will be recognized but only as "Local Disk" and the space shown is "0" bytes and the data is RAW (versus NFTS)

Is there any way to get back in to this drive? My understanding from what I have read is that the Partition Table or the MBR has been corrupted or deleted. What do I need to do to see the data again? I tried to use CopyRDMA but that didn't work. What do I need to do to get this drive back with NTFS structure and available to explore?

Specs:

Broken Drive : WD740GD-00NLR1 (74GB Raptor)
Windows XP + SP3

Thanks in advance for your help!

Benjamin

You might want to read what errors you have. If you are looking for the logical recovery, Ontrack has a free software on their website and many other places for the data recovery.

Run those to see if you can get your data back!!!

R-Studio, WinHex, or search for something to do with the partition repair. Software wise, you should be able to get a free version and to see if that will work. If that gets you the data, then go buy the license for $70 or so.

If you can get the SMART error details, post it here and gurus will get you some advise to understand what the errors mean. Sometimes you may get the answer that are bit painfull to swallow but those advises are to the point and not to take it personal.

Yeah, I won't take it personal... if it's dead, it's dead. That's life. Nothing but 1s and 0s. I guess I have that approach since all of the critical information is backed up

I will give those software title you mention a try..

Regarding the SMART driver errors, they were all bad sectors as far as I could tell.

I did try winhex.... i am able to see the drive but everything reads as bab sector.
I have also tried GParted which notes that I must run chkdsk /f ...which when I try to run say "cannot open volume for direct access"

And that means.... absolute toast?

...you have more than surpassed by abilities. I think I will wave my magic wand over the HDD..if data doesn't come spouting out the other side, I will throw it in a box.

...meaning, I have no idea how to check firmware modules...or how to run scripts to regenerate translators...

If any one has any suggestions I would give it a try...I am up for the challenge as that is all that it is at this point. I have never lost data on account of a failed drive. This will be a first in the 20 years I have been killing time on a PC that I have truly lost data when actually trying to get it to come back.

Benjamin.

Im think the first should be identified the problem, u can use MHDD or another ATA terminal software, to get the ATA registers, check passport if its identified Model, Serial Number Size, and send the read sectors comamands, then u get a guide about u problem

Regards