[ces4r87]

I have a 300 GB Western Digital External Hard drive. The other day while I was copying some files from my pc to the hard drive I accidentally turned off the computer. WHen I turned the computer back on, it wouldnt read the hard drive.I tried plugging the hard drive to my laptop. It read it, but it said that the hard drive only had capacity for 3.9GB. I opened it, and all my files were gone. I reconnected it to my pc and this time it read it but with the same results of the laptop, only 3.9GB capacity and all my files gone. I tried several data and partition recovery programs and none seem to detect this hard drive. The programs work perfectly with my other two hard drives. Is there a way I could recover my files? if not, is there a way that I could make the hard drive usable again? I've tried formatting. On my pc, it turned off mid-process. On my laptop, format wouldn't start. It gave an error message. Thanx 4 ur help!

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I think, the hopes are slim.
How is the drive reported in Disk Management?

[Broni]

I think, the hopes are slim.
How is the drive reported in Disk Management?

[Kemasa]

If it is just the partition table which is messed up and you have not written anything to the disk and if you know exactly how the disk was partitioned, then you could use a Knoppix Live CD to recreate the partition table. You might also be able to use the older program "fdisk" and perhaps, if you are careful you can use the disk management, but you have to make sure that you don't create the filesystem (which is harder to avoid). You might have to reboot the machine after fixing the partition table so that it notices that there is really a filesystem there.

Personally, I am more comfortable using Linux based tools to repair things since it does specifically what you want, rather than point and click do it all.

But, as asked, you need to see what it looks like in the disk management. Even if it is messed up there, you might be able to repair it as mentioned.