Hi,

My Seagate 320 GB External HDD is not getting recognised and asking to format the drive when inserted. I have tried it on another PC but still the same problem. I haven't performed any operation yet. I have very important data in this drive. I request you to please help me in this regard.

I purchased this hard disk with caddy in September 2008 to use it as external hard disk. Since 2008 I haven't had this type of problem but there was another problem like unable to recognise the drive but upon re-insertion it used to solve this problem but now numerous attempts were failed, even tried to boot the pc with external hdd usb inserted.

Product Information
Brand: Seagate
Series: Momentus 7200.3
Model: ST9320421AS
Packaging: Bare Drive
Interface: SATA 3.0Gb/s
Capacity: 320GB
Cache: 16MB
Average Latency: 4.17ms
RPM: 7200 RPM
Form Factor: 2.5"

Problem Statement

Upon insertion


Disk management details

Have you try contacting a professional data recovery service yet? I to talk to someone personally you probably should be able to get some ideas on how to proceed. Don't forget that a phone call is always free!

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Nationwide data recovery services for RAID servers and laptops - http://www.harddriverecovery.org/

No I haven't spoken to any professional data recovery service. Few years back to recover photos from a corrupt memory card I used GetData's RecoverMyFiles software. Please help me and let me know any software paid or free which guarantees recovery of my 300 GB data. No body guarantees but if someone had similar experience please suggest the recovery software.

image drive 1st, then fix filesystem if needed, problem solved. Work off image afterwards.

But keep in mind you could blow your disk up, then your SOL.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

Doesn't exist in data recovery. No product nor company can "guarantee" recovery. I would do as others have posted make an image of the drive then work of the image ONLY. You can use r-studio to create the image to another drive the same size or larger. Then load the image into r-studio scan it and see if it can recover your data. Do it all the time works well for me.

Could we see the partition table and boot sector with Microsoft's Sector Inspector?
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.

If this doesn't run on Windows 7, then you could use DMDE to capture sector 0:

DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery):
http://softdm.com/download.html

Select Mode -> Hexadecimal

Have you previously attached this drive directly to your computer's motherboard via SATA rather than USB?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for your responses. I haven't attached it to motherboard, I just use it as external USB drive.
Please click to view Sector Inspector output
I'll try the above recommendations if there are any more solutions please suggest me. Thanks all for your help.

The problem drive appears to be PHYSICALDRIVE1.

Windows is detecting the capacity correctly as ...

38913 x 255 x 63 x 512 = 320 070 320 640 bytes

However, the partition table is telling us that there is a FAT32 volume beginning at sector 63. Its size is 67108801 sectors. This corresponds to a capacity of 32GiB.

ISTM that the drive has been reinitialised with a 32GiB FAT32 volume after starting out as a single full sized NTFS volume. I say this because the boot sector (LBN 63) is an NTFS boot sector, not FAT32. The size of this NTFS volume is 0x2542D680 + 1, which is equal to 320GB.

http://www.google.com/search?q=0x2542d6 ... in+decimal

AISI, there is a very easy solution that should recover your data. It involves editing the partition table in sector 0 using DMDE.

You need to change the following line ...

0x01c0 01 00 0c fe ff ff 3f 00 00 00 c1 ff ff 03 00 00

... to this ...

0x01c0 01 00 07 fe ff ff 3f 00 00 00 81 d6 42 25 00 00

Then eject and reconnect your drive so that the OS re-enumerates it.

NTFS Volume Boot Record of Win2K and Windows XP:
http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/NTFSBR.htm

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Before attemping any of this on your drive if data is of any value to you at all. Clone it. Then you can do anything you want on this clone. If you make a mistake you still have your original drive and can clone again. That way you are safe and your data is safe. I do not say stop all DIY but do it smart if you want back your data. You can follow any advise here you like and do what ever you like but do it on a clone and not your original data. Play it safe with your original HDD. That is where some are wrong when they give advise and people do this on the original drive and after they loose all. Your choice only take a little time to clone it before you start to do all this other stuff. Play it safe and clone. Now you have heard it more than once now it is your choice.

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Iorana Haraharaini

There is no risk. If for any reason the OP wishes to revert to the original partition table, then he can simply edit the same bytes again. His backup sector is right here on HDD Guru.

I have been through similar procedures in other forums. Never any problem ...

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

OK this one is great for you and your ways. But to be safe make a back up and work on it. No need to screw up the drive and destroy the data on it. Better safe than sorry. Like you quote in your name "A backup a day keeps DR away" A clone of a bad drive keeps data safe

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Iorana Haraharaini

I would suggest that before the OP does anything, he tells us the full history of the drive. Something trashed the partition table. I don't believe this could have happened without human intervention. In fact the 32GiB FAT32 partition is consistent with the limit imposed on FAT32 by Vista and Win7, so it would seem that someone has re-initialised the drive and has selected FAT32 in preference to NTFS. Fortunately it does not appear that the drive was subsequently formatted, in which case my solution should work. If not, then undoing the changes would be simple enough.

That said, if the drive is to be cloned, then I would implement my changes on the clone before letting any data recovery software loose on it. Sometimes the software gets confused by these kinds of inconsistencies in the file system.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Here is a current thread in another storage forum where a user has regained access to his data by changing the partition ID byte from FAT to NTFS:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys ... 45fb98ee2f

Just one byte needed to be modified. It's a very similar situation to the OP's.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thank you fzabkar and poehere for your replies I'm very happy that there is some way to fix this problem.



Since 2008 I remember partitioning it in to 100 GB and 200 GB partitions two times and Full partition two times. I used Paragon tool to merge or divide the partitions. Whenever the usb is loosely connected windows popped up saying device is malfunctioned I used to simply unplug and wait for some time and then reinsert which worked all the times. I thought this problem would be because I bought the OEM drive and Caddy separately and it is not a branded assembled drive. Few days back I installed HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool to format my 4GB Sandisk USB drive which I was unable to format using windows format utility. Around this time I simply pulled out the USB cable for my external hard disk rather than using safely removal in windows. After this incident it is giving the above mentioned problem.

fzabkar I'll try your solution and will reply. I'm new to DMDE tool and have to study a bit to understand what I'm actually doing. Please help me with usage if you can.

Thank you fzabkar you are star your solution worked. Yes you are right....I just blindly followed your steps after reading the DMDE manual. I now have access to all my data.

I'm a computer science graduate and want to learn more about DR...please direct me to some online links, tutorials and related topics. Thank you very much for your help and support.



Sharif

Hi there....As I mentioned above the major problem is solved but the previous problem...The USB device not recognised is still there and started again. Previously this error message used to appear once in a while but now it is persistent. Windows 7 displays the following error messages. I observed that usually this happens whenever I try to access a large file.



Also tried with a copy tool TeraCopy



It looks Ok below after plugging the usb again.



And after a couple of times the same old format the drive messages pops up but it'll be fine when I pop in usb again. I can view and access small size files but when it comes to large files it gives device not recognised message.



I request anyone with a solution to please help me. Thanks for your help and support in this regard.

As stated before you should make a clone of the drive before it fails totaly, to secure your data.
The steps you followed from fzabkar was good IF the drive was healthy or intentionally screwed with.
But in this case the drive is NOT healthy, and I believe you have bad sectors in boot area, or a failing head.

So the steps that should been taken is:
1. Make a clone/image of the drive, with the drive directly attached to your motherboard, NOT trough the usb-enclosure.
2. Run any logical recovery program (Get Data Back, R-Studio) on that clone.
3. Save your recovered files to a healthy drive.

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

Thanks for your reply. This is a 2.5" sata drive will that be OK if I connect it to my desktop motherboard which has 3.5" sata.
many people online are not recommending this because of the voltage issues.

Please recommend a cloning software.

It's ok.

Disagree.

@Sharif,

I agree with the previous comments by mr_spokk. If you accept the risks of your DIY recovery attempts (remember: you might make the situation worse than it is now, and nothing is guaranteed!) then I have a couple of comments


Please supply links to the explanations by several of these "many people", so that we can read about the "issues" which they are claiming, and we can see if these peple are referring to the same "issues" or not.


IMHO you have a choice of several different ones, depending on your budget, skills with different OS, expectations of support / ease of use / flexibility in control / ability to pause & continue the cloning process etc. etc. etc. Search the forum for "clone" and "cloning" to see previous discussions. Examples of previous recommendations by members include: GNU ddrescue, HDClone, Media Tools Pro, DMDE etc. Do not use Acronis True Image, Ghost or similar utilites, which are designed for cloning working disks.