Hi everyone,
So I had a scare a few weeks ago where my external was suddenly not recognized after an unexpected shutdown. Went through the malware removal guide over at MG (it found some) and I don't know how I did it, but I got it working again and began backing up data. (may have just been a restart or two)
The first time I had this happen was two years ago, and it was fixed by setting the drive to wait for a longer period before going into sleep mode. I guess the reasoning is that something tries to write to the drive while it's sleeping and causes an error
Last week it became inaccessible again after throwing $MFT and I/O errors, so I tried basic things: taking it off the powered hub and plugging straight into the main, reinstalling the drive software (Max Menu Manager Basics) on the primary drive. Eventually I was able to get the computer to see the drive exists, but it showed up as "F: Local disc" rather than "F: Seagate FreeAgent"
While it was at least partially running (but inaccessible) I installed "Seagate Drive Settings" and was able to set the drive to never go into sleep mode, thinking that if it worked once I might as well attempt it again. I also turned off the led light because I'd read a humungous thread of people who'd recovered this model drive by opening it up and unplugging the light. Well neither did a thing, but since then I've been unable to set the sleep mode back to where it had been.
So current status:
-Disk management--when it sees the drive--shows it as having no file system.
-At some point in the process I described above, the folders were suddenly visible in windows explorer but clicking on them gave an inaccessible message. They're now hidden behind an inaccessible message when clicking the drive name again.
-TestDisk recognizes the drive, actual drive name, and size, but can't find a partition with the initial search. When it switches over to the deeper scan it takes 3-4 minutes to analyze each cylinder. Out of fear that I was going to damage something, I didn't let it get beyond 14.
-took the drive out of the case (it's a barracuda 7200.11) and hooked it up using an SATA to USB
-The demo of Active File Recovery found 8-10 bad sectors at the beginning of the drive and it looked like that's where the boot record is of course. All sectors it scanned after that gave read errors, but due to the amount of time vs time of night, I paused and saved the scan pretty early, then shut it down.
At this point I have no idea what to do. Wondering if there's a way to clone it on to my new external (Iomega eGo 1tb) so I can work on it there just in case. I've seen it suggested that "Recover My Files" and "Disk Internals Partition Recovery" can work in these situations to recover files.
Here are my specs:
PC - Windows XP SP3, core2 duo
Drive - Seagate FreeAgent 500gb (350gb used)
Any help may result in my undying love for you, which you may be able to barter for other goods and services, maybe some bacon. Yeah I'm not above bribery.
Thanks,
B.
So I had a scare a few weeks ago where my external was suddenly not recognized after an unexpected shutdown. Went through the malware removal guide over at MG (it found some) and I don't know how I did it, but I got it working again and began backing up data. (may have just been a restart or two)
The first time I had this happen was two years ago, and it was fixed by setting the drive to wait for a longer period before going into sleep mode. I guess the reasoning is that something tries to write to the drive while it's sleeping and causes an error
Last week it became inaccessible again after throwing $MFT and I/O errors, so I tried basic things: taking it off the powered hub and plugging straight into the main, reinstalling the drive software (Max Menu Manager Basics) on the primary drive. Eventually I was able to get the computer to see the drive exists, but it showed up as "F: Local disc" rather than "F: Seagate FreeAgent"
While it was at least partially running (but inaccessible) I installed "Seagate Drive Settings" and was able to set the drive to never go into sleep mode, thinking that if it worked once I might as well attempt it again. I also turned off the led light because I'd read a humungous thread of people who'd recovered this model drive by opening it up and unplugging the light. Well neither did a thing, but since then I've been unable to set the sleep mode back to where it had been.
So current status:
-Disk management--when it sees the drive--shows it as having no file system.
-At some point in the process I described above, the folders were suddenly visible in windows explorer but clicking on them gave an inaccessible message. They're now hidden behind an inaccessible message when clicking the drive name again.
-TestDisk recognizes the drive, actual drive name, and size, but can't find a partition with the initial search. When it switches over to the deeper scan it takes 3-4 minutes to analyze each cylinder. Out of fear that I was going to damage something, I didn't let it get beyond 14.
-took the drive out of the case (it's a barracuda 7200.11) and hooked it up using an SATA to USB
-The demo of Active File Recovery found 8-10 bad sectors at the beginning of the drive and it looked like that's where the boot record is of course. All sectors it scanned after that gave read errors, but due to the amount of time vs time of night, I paused and saved the scan pretty early, then shut it down.
At this point I have no idea what to do. Wondering if there's a way to clone it on to my new external (Iomega eGo 1tb) so I can work on it there just in case. I've seen it suggested that "Recover My Files" and "Disk Internals Partition Recovery" can work in these situations to recover files.
Here are my specs:
PC - Windows XP SP3, core2 duo
Drive - Seagate FreeAgent 500gb (350gb used)
Any help may result in my undying love for you, which you may be able to barter for other goods and services, maybe some bacon. Yeah I'm not above bribery.
Thanks,
B.