OS hdd data vanished?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
F

ffdg11

Honorable
Feb 3, 2014
7
0
10,510
I was testing some new headphones when win 7 froze. Next boot up was very slow and explorer.exe kept failing. I kept rebooting until the startup loop never ended. Next time i got a repair startup option and afterwards win7 boot up was still endless. I decided to use my disk to repair startup and my main os drive appears as 0mb, and from my xp partition says that has no format.

Now when i try to boot win7 a message saying that some recent hardware change makes boot up not possible.

Could startup repair have messed up my os install or did my wd raptor die?

If not, is there someway to restore my os and have my data back?

Thanks in advance
 
Solution
James Mason
Just an FYI for the future, if a hard drive makes any noise besides a low hum from the disk spinning you should return it or start replacing it.
Sort by date Sort by votes
James Mason

James Mason

Titan
Jan 2, 2014
13,553
7
74,965
It's possible your raptor died. i had one die on me after about a year or so, but i was using it in a raid0.
the only way you might recover any data off it is to reinstall windows on a working hard drive and then grab whatever important files you can see, if you can see any.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

ffdg11

Honorable
Feb 3, 2014
7
0
10,510


I boot up from my xp install on another hard drive and it appears like if my win7 Raptor has no format and i can't access it unless i give it a format. Also to mention, the raptor, when i try to acess it, makes like the same double click noise again and again.
I'm going to try it on another pc, and hopefully it comes back to life when i format it.

It's weird how it all happened when i was messing with the audio ports in the soundcard when everything went bad, not sure if has any relation,
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

ffdg11

Honorable
Feb 3, 2014
7
0
10,510


Thats my last resort when my last hope is to revive the hdd.
I read that with win vista/7 install disks, if you install over a hard drive with a windows install, it'll make a fresh install and put the old files somewhere.
I think this won't be possible as this drive appears like being 0mb with a win7 install, and won't have any space for a new partition.

Do you know any trick to access it? I tried command prompt, from another os and after some waiting i only get the message that i need to format to use the drive.

By the way, before this happened, i had like 6gb free, after it froze, could some big crash dump loaded into it and blasted the drive for not having enough space?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

ffdg11

Honorable
Feb 3, 2014
7
0
10,510
Very interesting. I tried the chkdsk commands and i only got some message saying that it's an NTFS drive and some cycling redundant error.

Anyways, from Xp it appears as a healthy partition, but formatless and i can't access the GUI to explore the files.

Lastly i get some Bios alert saying: Sata1 (the disk in question) "S.M.A.R.T. Status BAD, Backup and Replace"
Now it doesnt even appear as a windows 7 0mb installation.

Having seen this, do you know about some tool to attemp to grab and save some files?
I think that when i abruply switched off the psu in a hurry after so many endless windows welcome window i may have corrupted something. I think after formatting disk will run alright, because other partitions of this same drive, are accessed with no problem.

Thanks again!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
James Mason

James Mason

Titan
Jan 2, 2014
13,553
7
74,965
You can try the suggestions here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
or download a free trial of Acronis True Image http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/trueimage/ and backup and restore the hard drive (to a different working hard drive/partition), or image it onto a working hard drive/partition. This MAY work but it might not, recovering data is very tricky. Read the messages acronis tells you because it can and will overwrite your data if your not careful about where you tell it to put stuff, and then it's basically gone forever.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

ffdg11

Honorable
Feb 3, 2014
7
0
10,510
Hello again. I've been messing around with no much luck, and decided to try Easeus data recovery program. So far so good, the first thing that detects my win7 drive as NTFS (i'm running it from my xp partition). It's looking for data, and my Raptor makes the normal ticking sound it's been doing since 2008.
It's finding my files, but it's kind of freeware and allows me to recover like only 2gb.

Could you recommend me some similar program but that allows me to retrieve unlimited number of files?
It's mainly music and not very relevant stuff, but i'd rather not lose it.

Thanks!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

ffdg11

Honorable
Feb 3, 2014
7
0
10,510


Looks like this boy will live up for some more spins :D
I tried Recuva, and even though it had some trouble, it found some data, very slow though.
Then i tried iCare Data recovery and i just saw all my data there, i'm taking my time to recover all my important stuff, not life dependant, but i that would like to keep. Great program.

This drive has always been very noisy, you can even notice loud ticking when scrolling around your photos, but it's fast. Let's say, i got back 98,2% of my data, and if i lost something it's because i missed it when exploring it.

Tomorrow i'll format it and will hopefully work like before with a fresh win7 install, other partitions on this drive never stopped working. I'll keep my valuable data in other hdd's just in case this decides to fail again, but i think this happened right after i cut in a hurry power from the psu, causing atrocious corruption in the hdd and boot files.

Thanks a lot for your attention and support, really appreciated it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

ffdg11

Honorable
Feb 3, 2014
7
0
10,510


You were indeed right. I was unable to format it properly, and even though i deleted the partition, couldn't successfully make a new one.
These WD Raptors are very loud, it made the same loud ticking noise it's done for six years, but at some points when it failed it made some double clicks like stuck.
I got some "SMART status bad, backup and replace" message in the bios screen.
The thing is that an old 15gb partition on this drive where i store music, works flawlessly and can still be accessed with no problem.
Not sure if there's some way of repair hard drive partitions or if the drive is just toasted.

Anyways, i had a WD Caviar catching up dust and was able to recover all my worthy data from the other hdd so it's no big deal.

Thanks again
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom