Have I lost all my data?

[grs]

I think my brother might have lost all data from his Seagate USB 400GB external HDD. It came out of the box preformatted for Windows and it worked fine. He hasn't used it for about two months then he buys a Mac laptop and tried it in there, it worked the first time then the next time he tried it the Mac tell him it needs formatting. I've just tried it on my Windows PC and I get the same. Windows sees it as a 400GB HDD and that it is unfiormatted with no data on it.

Does this mean all the data is lost or can some be retrieved?

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I would try getdataback:
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

if that can recover your data, then you can just format and copy the data back. It may be possible to try repairing the partition table on the drive, and that may get your databack - but seeing as how you can't even access the data now, the most important thing is getting a backup of that data before you screw around.

 

[robotcha]

There is a sort of config file on the drive called the MFT (master file table). It has an index of every file and the sectors they reside on. It's possible the MFT is corrupt but that doesn't mean your files are gone. There is a way in Windows to rebuild the MFT but I think it's safe to say you should try getting the files off before you do anything else on that drive. I've used a utility called Recover4All that searches the drive sector by sector to find all the files. Once found you can recover the files to another drive. You have to pay for a license to recover your files but I think there are several free utilities that do this too.

Whatever you do, do not format that drive until you are certain you no longer want those files. On a quick format your files can still be recovered (like the getdataback utility I.M.O.G. mentioned) but on a full format..., I have yet to use a utility that can get files back. Once the 1's and 0's pass over a sector...it's gone.

Supposedly you can still send the drive to a lab and recover the data after a full format. Which is why utilities that erase drives use multiple passes to write each sector. I use Eraser because it is free and writes to the cluster tips as well as multiple passes.

Here is a link to the fixmbr & fixboot commands when you're ready (after you try to recover the files):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314503

You could also try running chkdisk on the drive like this wiki says (at the bottom of the article) but I doubt it will work:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Advanced_NTFS_Boot_and_MFT_Repair


Good luck with the drive.

 

[JOHNILL1971]

I HOPE THIS WILL BE OF SOME HELP!!

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1139

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

mac by default can not read NTFS, and a 400G drive wont work on fat32, so possible OSX did corrupt something

 

[UltraManiac]

if none of the above works.

try the program called Active@ UNDELETE

I lost all the data on my 500GB hard drive before and a member of this forum recommended that program to me and i recovered every bit data that I lost.

The down side is that the program is not free. But if you got inportant data on the drive like i had on mine, give it a try.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

i had to use R-Tools data recovery, for the cost and size it kicks those brand name ones to crap! (cant speak for active undelete never used it)