Hard drive simply died

Tlingitchief

Honorable
Nov 28, 2012
1
0
10,510
I been working on computer for like 20 years now. I know what to do when a drive dies and how to get your info back, if your lucky I can. I had a customer call me and told me her computer just stopped working. She had done all her updates and kept her anit-virus up to date. She is using windows 7 I took the sata drive out and installed it on another machine. The drive spun up and seemed to be working, but nothing was on the drive. I use some undeleting software and it reported that there was nothing to undelete! I used windows disk management to check the disk, said it was healthy and active. Then I found it needed to be formated. Well, couldn't figure it out, so I told her it needed a new drive and the os put back on.
Two days ago, mine did the same thing! I am running windows 7. I use the same anti-virus, I take care of my machine. No I didn't put her hard drive on my machine, I have others to check that out. But the drive is the same, nothing. All data gone! Everything seems to check out ok, just seems to be needing to be formated. I haved formated it yet. Hoping to get back the data. No I didn't back up the system.
Any ideas where to look? What to do? This a virus locked it out? Bug in windows 7? I am all out of ideas.
 

Scott_D_Bowen

Honorable
Nov 28, 2012
837
0
11,060
The only things that stands out here are: I use the same anti-virus and the drive is the same.

If you use TestDesk does it detect any old data on the HDD at all?
or does it appear that the HDD was zero-filled? (which you would think a user would notice, and should be 'almost impossible' while Windows is running).

SDB%20QLWA%20v1.800%20Diag.png


Download: http://scottdbowen.id.au/Cs/SDB-QWLA.zip

You can get TestDisk from here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

SDB.