HDD Crashes, now strange problem.

[dreamtfk]

Well I just lost about 20 hours of movies and about 1000 mp3's because my D: drive just decided to erase itself :confused:

So now if that wasnt bad enough I try to reinstall some programs that were on that drive only to find out that my cd drive isnt working. My BIOS is reading the drive and it is working fine under device manager but it will not read any cd's.

I cannot find my drivers disc anywhere and the Lite-On site amazingly doesnt have my model drivers (LTR-32123S 32x12x40x) Can anyone help me out here this really sux. :mad:


btw: It says I need to Format my D: drive now, is there any way to retrieve my files or are they gone 4 good?

[shiyan]

first of all, don't panic. panic only makes matters worse.

I suggest not worrying about the CD yet, as your data is more important. Anyways, CD drives don't need drivers.

What you want to do is get your data back. to do that you'll need to use some sort of data recovery program. I've always used Get Data Back, and it hasn't failed me so far. R-Studio is also good.

Just remember not to modify that hard drive any more. so no new partitions, formatting, or writing onto that drive.

to copy your data to, you'll need another drive, so you might need to purchase a new hard drive.

[dreamtfk]

Why do I need to copy the data (assuming I get it back) to another drive?

[shiyan]

absolutely vital to data recovery is that you don't modify the drive you are trying to recover data from until you got everything you can from it.

if you copy the hidden data that's on the drive, back onto that drive, it is quite likely you'll overwrite some of the hidden data you're trying to recover.

what data recovery programs do is scan the surface of the entire drive, then kind of reconstruct your file table for you, so that you can select which files and folders to copy to another drive.

what it can't do is rebuild the deleted or damaged file table.

[dreamtfk]

But if the HDD isnt physically damaged why can't I just recover what I can on the drive and go on my merry way? Windows btw is on my C: drive.

[shiyan]

well, I read this from your first post:

Originally posted by dreamtfk
Well I just lost about 20 hours of movies and about 1000 mp3's because my D: drive just decided to erase itself :confused:

btw: It says I need to Format my D: drive now, is there any way to retrieve my files or are they gone 4 good?

so I figured that you presently can't see anything on the drive that was D:, which means that the only way you can get anything back is to use a data recovery program...

even if your drive is not physically damaged, whatever happened did damage your partition table or file table, which is why you can't see what's on D:.

that's enough reason to use data recovery program IMHO.

[dreamtfk]

Ok I see. So is this correct?

1) Copy to another drive

2) Reformat D:

3) Recopy the files back to D:

I just finished using GetDataBack and Im getting a screen asking me to select the files system to be displayed in the recovery tree. It shows me FAT32 at many different sectors and two of them have a yellow button next to them and the rest are red. I chose the first one at it built a recovery tree.

I am now at step 5 where it shows all the files I had on D, do I just select them all and push copy?

[shiyan]

no greens? hmm that's not brilliant, but I guess yellow will have to do then.

yes, 1), 2), 3) is what you need to do.

I hope you get all your data back, although yellow is not the best start possible.

select on of the yellows, then press next, and it should rebuild the file table.

you then select all the stuff you want it to copy to another drive, and start copying.

[dreamtfk]

Ok I just bought another HDD for the copying. Since Windows is stored on my C drive and there is not much room on it I will have to disconnect it and attatch the the new one along with the D drive and then use the WD software through DOS. I will tell you how it goes.

[shiyan]

what is this WD software that you need to use in DOS?

when you get a new drive, if it does not have any partitions, just create a new partition on it under Windows' disk management and do a quick format.

no need to be messing around in DOS.

[dreamtfk]

Ok I have recovered all data from the drive and put it onto a new drive. Now I can't figure out why my CD drive isn't working. It has power and the tray opens and closes but it won't read any cd I put in.

[shiyan]

first of all, I'm glad you got all your data back!

as for your CD drive not working... are you sure all the cables are connected as they should? if there is another IDE device on its cable, are the jumpers for slave/master set correctly?

have you tried with another IDE cable?

[Xaotic]

Is it only within Windows where the CD is not reading? A good test would be a bootable CD or booting from a DOS boot disk with CD support. I have seen corrupted ATAPI drivers within Windows installs with no error codes in drive properties in device mangler. Sometimes, this occurs when uninstalling burning software as well. You may also want to change the device to a different IDE channel to test for controller issues.

Looks like you're probably headed for a reinstall anyway, if so, I'd recommend running a ful set of diagnostics on the HDD. Then, if everything has passed, run a low level format and reinstall. Run the diagnostics again and chkdsk thorough to make sure everything is good. Assuming the CDRW was functional in DOS, setup, etc, it should be recognized and functional again in Windows.

[dreamtfk]

The CDRW was fully functional right up until my HDD crashed.

UPDATE: I just tried booting up using my WinXP cd and it worked just fine. So it is something in Windows that isn't allowing my CDRW to read cd's. Would a fresh install of Windows fix this?

[Xaotic]

It'll fix it fine. The HDD corruption most likely caused the problems with the ATAPI drivers. I'd strongly recommend a reinstall for any drives that have needed recovery software to get data from them as a general precaution.

[dreamtfk]

Sounds good, I'll run a fresh install 2morrow and post back on how it went. Thx

[sup3rcarrx8]

Wow i never knew they had software online that can recover your data. Good thing i read this thread. Thanks guys. :D

[dreamtfk]

Ok this is a follow up. I am now trying to format and erase everything on my C: drive so I can fresh install windows. When I try to use the boot disk for MaxBlast 3 to format I am receiving an error saying "Cannot find DOS! Press Any Button To Try Again"

I really need to reinstall Windows because everything is screwed up, I can't even use my cd-rom, printer, etc. So how do I reformat and partition if I can't use DOS?

[ThePerfectCore]

Boot from the Windows CD and go from there.

[dreamtfk]

Originally posted by ThePerfectCore
Boot from the Windows CD and go from there.

Yeh but there is no option for reformatting and partitioning.

[ThePerfectCore]

You're using 2000/XP, right?

It should be an option further into the installation, when you're selecting what partition to install the OS on.

[dreamtfk]

WindowsXP yeh. Let me try and again and see if I can find what your talking about.