I'm totally bummed - My data HDD shows that it is empty!

[Tempe]

My girlfriend's computer's mobo seemed to be fried, so I pulled out my old machine (Win2k SP4) from 2002. By the way all drives are from Western Digital. My computer had a 40gb C and 250gb D drive. She had a 120gb drive with all files stored on that drive. I wanted to copy all of her files onto my D drive. I copied those files from the 120gb file onto my 40gb drive. Then I installed my 250gb drive and proceeded to transfer the files from the 40gb drive onto the 250gb drive.

First I noticed some of the files/folders would not open. The message was: "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable." Most of the files/folders on the 250gb files would still open. Then one-by-one the rest of the files/folders became "corrupted and unreadable". Upon reboot from trying to get my Internet connection to work again, now the 250gb drive (D) says used space, free space, and capacity are all 0 bytes. Upon startup BIOS still recognizes both the WD400 and the WD2500 drives.

Any suggestions? I never deleted anything from the WD1200, so all of that data is safe. However, I'm very concerned about a year's worth of data on the WD2500 that was not backed up. I would appreciate any help you guys can offer!

T

 

[Twizzler09]

The BIOS will recognize the Manufacturer and Model even if the HDD is dead. Just part of how the system works.

Go back into the BIOS and see if its registering the correct storage size. If its displaying 250GB and windows displays nothing, that would mean the drive essentially lost its format. If thats the case it might be possible to re-format it and continue using it... but I wouldn't trust its reliability.

On the other hand.....if the BIOS also reads no storage space, the drive is toast. I would however try to use your 250GB drive in a different computer, assuming you have one available, and see if its contents are readable. Its a crap shoot, but you might be able to pull your data off it that way, and reformat it.

This is a good example....always backup your data! You never know when the gremlins will come knocking. Especially when it comes to data storage.

 

[superdave1984]

Download Pandora Recovery Software. It is pretty darn good AND free.
http://www.pandorarecovery.com/
Also, WD has some diagnostics available on their website I believe. Or they used to. I would try to find some diagnostic tools to run on the drive.

 

[Roadkill]

If your Win2K box is from 2002. Then the motherboard is most likely a year or more older than that. Those BIOS's will not understand a 250GB HDD. They didn't know how to access them properly. You would have to run translation software or fdisk and format the 250 Gig drive into a smaller partition that the BIOS and OS will understand. Mind you sometimes the use of a drive translation software package is required in order to be able to even fdisk and format on an older system.

 

[superdave1984]

If your Win2K box is from 2002. Then the motherboard is most likely a year or more older than that. Those BIOS's will not understand a 250GB HDD. They didn't know how to access them properly. You would have to run translation software or fdisk and format the 250 Gig drive into a smaller partition that the BIOS and OS will understand. Mind you sometimes the use of a drive translation software package is required in order to be able to even fdisk and format on an older system.

Good call. I had forgotten about the 137GB limit on older boards.

 

[Tempe]

I'm going to take my machine into a local data recovery place to get a quote. superdave1984 if I run that software is there any chance of ruining what is left on the drive?

T

 

[smokey]

stelluar pheniox is a great recovery software. It isn't free but it works. I have used it many times to recover crashed drives. It doesn't damage the drives it is recovering either.

 

[superdave1984]

I'm going to take my machine into a local data recovery place to get a quote. superdave1984 if I run that software is there any chance of ruining what is left on the drive?

T

Won't hurt a thing as long as you follow the directions.

 

[Tempe]

I had my brother in law use gotomypc and he did some searching around on my computer. He lives in IL so he simply couldn't come over haha. While running some stuff on CCleaner there were times where we got error messages saying the C drive was corrupt, even though I've had no problems with the drive. Well every time I boot up chdsk wants to run. Even if I run it all the way it finds nothing.

We think there is a virus on the computer. Around the same time that the D drive files started being corrupt my Avast! Antivirus would block internet connection when the Webshield was activated. I have to deactivate that provider to allow web pages to load.

The D drive's master boot record is damaged. He was running Zero Assumption Recovery to see if anything shows. He also said my file names and folder names might be corrupted if I recover the data. I have a ton of pictures, and that would suck trying to put them back in order!

I'll try that Pandora program too. Sorry I took so long to reply.

T