PC shutoff now storage is gone ?

[toxirau]

I currently have a pair of Raptors in RAID0 for my main OS and a 80gig Seagate satadrive for my backup incase of problems like this. I also have a 750gig Sata Seagate which my MBR and all my storage is saved. Well my computer shutoff instantly and when i booted windows wanted to do a disk check so i let it. In the middle of the disk check windows found a problem and tried to fix it then said that there was not enough free space to mirror the drives or something. So i rebooted again then all i get is "Can not read drive. Press Ctrl+alt+delete to reboot" so i reboot and reinstall windows on my raptors to try to get into windows and save my files. I have windows up and running again and it sees the drive but when i try to access it either locks up Windows Explorer or it says that the drive can not be accessed. I have about 5 years worth of data on this drive that i need to save is there anyway i can get it off of it ?

 

[angelkiller]

Have you installed chipset drivers on your new Windows installation? You know the CD that came with your motherboard?

Do you by chance have a spare computer you could attach the 750GB drive to?

 

[TheGuruStud]

Windows corrupted the partition and then the bootsector. Chkdsk makes it worse, usually. It just starts deleting shit. If chkdsk is fully run, sometimes I can't recover any data without a full sector scan.

Try repairing it with Partition Table Doctor. Try automatic 1st then manual if that doesn't work. In manual you can select other partitions that may exist. But make sure to make a backup (in PTD) in case it makes it worse (usually fixes any corrupted partitions/boot sectors for me).

It's a lovely feature of all windows versions. I've seen it/had it happen several times.

I can't recall it being done to multiple drive simultaneously, though.

 

[toxirau]

Have you installed chipset drivers on your new Windows installation? You know the CD that came with your motherboard?

Do you by chance have a spare computer you could attach the 750GB drive to?

Yes i have installed all drivers for the motherboard, and no this is the only PC that i have up and running that supports SATA at the moment.

Windows corrupted the partition and then the bootsector. Chkdsk makes it worse, usually. It just starts deleting shit. If chkdsk is fully run, sometimes I can't recover any data without a full sector scan.

Try repairing it with Partition Table Doctor. Try automatic 1st then manual if that doesn't work. In manual you can select other partitions that may exist. But make sure to make a backup (in PTD) in case it makes it worse (usually fixes any corrupted partitions/boot sectors for me).

It's a lovely feature of all windows versions. I've seen it/had it happen several times.

I can't recall it being done to multiple drive simultaneously, though.

Well i ran the automatic cycle and it apprently did something but it did not help. It's searching for partitions so that i can do the manual version but it says that it's going to take 3 hours just to look for partitions ?

 

[toxirau]

Also something else that i have come across is that is if I go into the disk management for windows it sees the drive to have one Primary RAW partition when it should be NTFS. Then in PTDD the drive shows up as a NTFS drive.

So apparently windows turned the NTFS partition into a RAW partition but it is still a NTFS partition ? o.o.... I'm guessing that windows corrupted the master file table?

I'm so lost. Images attached.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Hmmm....usually it finds the others right away (if any).

And yeah, I've seen it do RAW before like that. I'm sure it can be recovered with a sector search but then a lot of shit probably won't be in folders (kinda strange how things are recovered, seems different every time for me).

I'd try some recovery programs with the regular method and then sector if that fails. I've used R-studio, Ontrack EasyRecovery, Active Partition Recovery, and GetDataBack with success (others chime in here on good software). I can't think of anything else off the top of my head to do right now.

I assume you've been googling. Maybe there's a way to get it back if it says raw?

I do have one idea, but idk if it works, I never tried it. Maybe linux will be able to read it. I'd boot up an ubuntu disc and see what happens.

 

[toxirau]

I've tried a lot of ways that i have found none seem to find anything or fix anything. I also tried a live boot of ubuntu and that gave me the same error that windows is. I also let Active Partition Recovery and getbackdata run and neither came back with anything other than errors. I'm starting to think the drive has something wrong with it.

 

[TheGuruStud]

I've tried a lot of ways that i have found none seem to find anything or fix anything. I also tried a live boot of ubuntu and that gave me the same error that windows is. I also let Active Partition Recovery and getbackdata run and neither came back with anything other than errors. I'm starting to think the drive has something wrong with it.

It's possible. A defective drive sometimes acts just like a normal one with corruption (but I guess that's b/c the defective part corrupts it).

If someone can tell if it's the HDD controller (correct terminology?), then you could swap it out with another HDD's board.

Sometimes I get lucky by leaving it off for an extended period of time and then it works long enough to copy off data before it goes haywire. But if the data/partition has already been corrupted, I guess it won't matter (it might be fine though).

 

[toxirau]

Well i just rebooted and it worked oddly X.x.

I got most of my documents that i needed to save off of it and then in the middle of the transfer the pc BSODed and when i rebooted the drive quit working. Since i got about 90% of what i wanted from it i decided to just cut my losses.

I deleted the partition and tried to create a new partition. But when it would try to format it would just error saying "Windows was unable to complete the format" so i tried making multiple partitions. I made 1 100gig one for data, 1 300gig one for music, and then the last one would error out. So i removed 100mb off the end of the partition and it formated correctly. I'm guessing there is something bad with the end of the disk that was messing up the whole filesystem.

 

[TheGuruStud]

That's really weird. I say buy a new drive and RMA it.

If you want to give it a go (but please don't store anything important on it ), low level format it. That'll be a fresh slate.

Actually, I forgot to tell you of another must have app, oops! It's called HDD Regenerator. I've had AMAZING results with this. While the disk is still bad, it can definitely reallocate the data on the bad sectors and w/e else it does (says it repairs them, but idk). I've revived windows installs from the grave with it. Repaired literally bad boot sectors and used HDDs for long periods of time (completely stable) after they were crashing windows, etc.

 

[toxirau]

Thanks I shall look it up :3.

 

[toxirau]

Well now my problem has evolved.

I rebooted once more and now the partitions are gone and the drive is showing up as "Unreadable" So the drive is just bad. Also when ever i try to run HDD Regenerator I always get the error of "Drive MBR is bad please reboot".

Time to file a RMA.

 

[TheGuruStud]

At least you got your stuff off.

I tell everyone to get an external and keep a copy on it (and the internal) for reasons like this. You never know when something plugged in can go poof.