External drive, fried? wheres the data

[luckydriver]

WD 640 that's about a year old.

it shows only 145gigs free but there arent any files there in most directories. (including my backups which is disconcerting and of course i cant even do any new backups now).

i do see a few music files but when i click on them or try to copy them , it says cannot find the specified file then a bubble pops up and says

unable to save all the data for the file G:\$mft, the data has been lost etc etc.

then when a directory appears to be empty but i know there are files in it, you cant even delete the directory.

any ideas what to do? a chkdsk wont even work and neither will a defrag

 

[blackmancer]

damn. I had one of these and mine died on me all of a sudden. I took the HDD out and hooked up internally but it would shut off my computer the instant I powered it. anyway

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=301&sid=3&lang=en

try downloading the WD Data Lifeguard software, see if that helps OR

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatooldreg&vgnextoid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

try a bootable DOS version of Seatools and run the Generic test. I think it also has a chkdsk type function as well.