[dbmnazgul]

Hi... So I have an external drive connected via USB 2.0. It is an IOGEAR Ion 120GB drive, made into 4 drives; F, G, H, & I. For some reason G/ is no longer being recognized. XP claims it is not formatted and asks if I wish to format it now. Do I have any chance to save the data on G/? Unfortunately for me, it contains the info I care the most for... all of my Protools sessions, about 4 months of work. What steps can I take, if any? This sucks. Coincidentally, this happened during the same time I contracted that d#%& Aurora piece of crap. That seems to be gone now after much struggle, but so is the G/ drive... Please help. Thanks, Dan.

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Wow... doesn't anyone know any way to help me? I'm desperate.

[dbmnazgul]

Wow... doesn't anyone know any way to help me? I'm desperate.

[12matthias335]

Have you tried looking into any of those data recovery programs? I'm not an expert on those programs, but it might be a place to start looking into. Have you tried accessing it on safe mode? Other than that I can't think of anything else...

[dbmnazgul]

Can you recomend a recovery program? If I format the disk like it asks, will this lessen or increase the chances of recovery?

[Samm]

If you format the partition now, you can more or less kiss good bye to your chances of recovering the data.

Go to this link :
http://www.cgsecurit...l?testdisk.html
and download testdisk for winXP/NT

When you extract it, open the win folder & run the testdisk_win.exe
The instructions I'm about to give you are based on the dos version so they may be slightly different to the XP version.
Whatever you do, don't alter anything.

In testdisk, select the usb drive & select the analyse option. This should give you info on the partitions on that drive, including start & end addresses, file format etc. Copy & paste the info into a text file & attach it to your next post. It should give a better idea of whats going on with your drive (hopefully)

[dbmnazgul]

Okay, attached is the results... I don't understand any of it! I'm way too lo-fi for this...

Attached Files

•  Testdrive.txt   1.03KB   340 downloads

[Samm]

OK, firstly I noticed in the text dump you attached, that the line starting with number 5 appears twice. Please tell me thats a typo on your part!?

Next, can you try the following. Please follow this carefully. If my instructions do not correlate with your version of testdisk & therefore cannot follow them, let me know.

1. Run testdisk
2. Select the options menu, & change the entry [dump] to yes.
3. Go back to main menu & highlight your external drive in the list
4. Select Analyse again - you should see the screen that is in your text dump. Press the quit button. You should now see a screen with columns of hexadecimal numbers
5. Press the Next button to scroll down. Keep pressing it until the screen stops scrolling
6. Look at the last row (should start with the number 01F0). Make a note of the hex numbers in the last column of the last row. (eg 000055AA)
7. Press the quit button again to go to the next partition. Repeat the procedure of scrolling down & noting the last entry. Press quit and repeat for the 3rd & 4th partitions.

Exit testdisk
You should now have 4 sets of numbers.
Let me know what they are.

[Supergeek.dcse]

winternals have some amasing data recover programs that will recove allmost any thing

[dbmnazgul]

No typos... just cut & paste... should I continue with the directions?

[Samm]

Yeah, it won't do any harm.
I'm concerned about that duplicate entry though, basically it shouldn't be in there.

[dbmnazgul]

Okay, I followed the directions and only received 3 numbers... all three were "000055aa". I attached the last report it gave me as well...

Attached Files

•  testdiskreport.txt   1.07KB   236 downloads

[Samm]

OK, thats a bit odd.
Can you download partinfo from this link (NP/XP version) :

http://service1.syma...src=bar_sch_nam

You should just be able to run it without having partition magic etc installed.
Run the partinfo.exe, click on 'copy to clipboard' button, open notepad & paste.
Attach the text file here as usual.

[dbmnazgul]

I have tried that link multiple times, and each time it leads me to nothing. Why won't the link work?

[Samm]

Dunno, I've just got it to work, maybe the site was down when you tried?

Are you clicking on the 'PartInNT.zip for windows NT, 2000 or XP' link in that page?

[dbmnazgul]

Okay, yes it must have been down...
Here is the text file... thanks.

Attached Files

•  partinfo_results.txt   11.61KB   329 downloads