External Hard Drive Troubles

Zercof

Issue: My Maxtor OneTouch 4 (750g) External Hard Drive is no longer accessible. I have already contacted Maxtor and this is what I have concluded: Apparently the partition on the drive is corrupted. I have two choices. I can either format the drive, thus restoring the partition, but losing everything I specifically wanted to keep safe, or secondly, (which I'm trying to do) I can try to recover the files, or restore/fix (ionno) the partition.

Now, I really have no idea how this happened, or any good way of going about recovering the information. The file system is listed as RAW, and I have tried a couple programs (like Active@ Partition Recovery for Windows) to try and fix the issue, but I really don't know what to do. There are many pictures, and a few key programs here that I REALLY don't want to lose.

Help?


EDIT: This all started when I was simply copying a music folder from my computer to the external. I noticed it wasn't showing up in my Zune player, so I went to check out the file folder. When I tried to open it (or delete it), windows said it was corrupted. I didn't think much of it and rebooted my computer and the Hard Drive. After this, I was once alerted of an issue by the Hard Drive's Management Software, and thereafter, I couldn't access the drive.

exoplasm

I dunno, I think the hard drive itself might be failing. A corrupt partition is unlikely unless you cut the power while it was writing data.

I've had 5 different 1TB external maxtor drives die, all just after the short warranty period ended. It turned out that the drives inside were usable (they were 2x 500gb), but very slow and strange issues.

Anyways I would recommend taking the drive out of the enclosure and hooking it up to the PC, maybe use a live linux cd to try and recover the data. There's also UBCD4Win.

Zercof

Apparently someone in my family had a similar issue with their desktop's internal HardDrive. They took it to a computer "place" that will check and see if the data is recoverable at all for free, and if so, recover it for a small fee (I think like $30).

Since most of this is way over my head right now, I'm gonna go with the $30 option.
Mine's still under warranty, but they're not going to do anything for my data, at least not for free.


Many thanks for replying however. From the sound of it, Maxtor isn't all too reliable of a brand. :?

matrics

Yep... good plan, always attempt to recover the data before sending disks to warranty, as they don't usually guarantee data survival (they might just replace it)... just make sure the data recovery "place", as you put it, doesn't void your warranty

And yes, there are companies with better track records than Maxtor :P