BSOD during xfer to external, now external says unformatted! help!

[aaron7]

For whatever reason I came back to my computer while it was transferring 180gb to my external hard drive and there was a nice BSOD on the screen.

I shut the external off and rebooted my system.

When I was fully booted up I turned the external back on and Windows came up asking if I wante to format the drive!

The drive is brand new so all I have on it is what I was transferring.

Problem is, the stuff I was transferring was being MOVED... not copied.

Before I go through a data recovery (EASEUS says 10.5 hours) is there any way to fix the drive? Boot sector repair or something?

 

[aaron7]

I ended up doing a data recovery, wiping & reformatting the external, and putting the data back on. Shut the drive off.

Just went to use it again (for the first time since) and it's giving the EXACT SAME ERROR!!!

Now I know I have a bad hard drive (thanks again Western Digital) but really need to fix this partition.

I've tried Partition Table Doctor, Active Partition Recovery, and Partition Magic to no avail.

Any others to try?

 

[Paperdoc]

If you did a MOVE operation, first thing to do is, on the main PC, go into Recycle Bin and try to recover everything you moved off to the external drive. Hopefully the "move" actually simply did something like a Delete on the internal HDD, which means it is still safe in the Recycle Bin and can be undeleted.

If you can get all your files back that way, then deal with the external unit. If it has failed you twice, do not bother trying to recondition the drive or fix up its Partitions. Just get it replaced entirely under warranty before you have more trouble!

Not covered by warranty any more? Still, consider replacing the drive.

 

[aaron7]

Uh, yeah, that's really basic. Of course I would have checked the recycle bin before spending hours with partition recovery programs.

The partition is simply corrupted. I just need a software that will fix the partition.

 

[Paperdoc]

Sorry, did not realize you had done the obvious already. You'd be amazed how often threads leap to the complex solutions before trying the easier ones.

Have you looked at GetDataBack NTFS? It's a third-party utility you must pay for, but they do have an interesting free trial system. You can run their utility for free on your HDD and it will show you exactly what it can find and recover. If you think it will do all you need you pay and get your stuff. If not, you back out and your HDD is left untouched for some other technique. Recovery is by copying files found, so you need an empty HDD with space for the copies.

 

[aaron7]

I can do a data recovery but since the drive is 640gb it takes about 12 hours regardless of the software that I use.

This is why I wanted to try and fix the partition and then just copy off the data. Would be much quicker!