External HDD converted to RAW, lost 50,000 songs

tinana · Post by **tinana** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 9:27 pm

Grrrrr. Does anyone know if these songs are recoverable? I'm running WinXP sp2 and my songs are located on a Seagate usb/firewire 200gig external hard drive which was formatted NTFS but somehow converted to RAW. Now when trying to access the disk, it shows 0 bytes.

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:12 am

my harddrive thought it was unformatted at one point...

a friend jump on his linux box and plugged it in.. he was then able to tell it to reconstruct the filetable.

dunno how it's done... and don't really know what RAW is.. but I think it should be possible.

I was able to get everything back.

Dale.

gege · Post by **gege** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 3:23 pm

This already happened to once. I was able to recover ALL data, using a tool called GetDataBack. Its interface is a little ugly, but it is really good on doing its job: recovering lost data.

You will need another hard drive with a lot of free space, in order to save your recovered data.

Good lucky!

alanl · Post by **alanl** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 6:18 pm

This also happened to me.

Read all of this message before trying anything, and anything you try is at your own risk. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Try running CHKDSK. I picked this up somewhere:

----------------------------
Disk Error Checking can be accomplished from the CHKDSK Command - Line utility. To execute CHKDSK:
1. Click "Start" | "Run".
2. From the Run Window, type "CMD" and click on the "OK" button.
3. From the Command Window's prompt, type "chkdsk /?" and press the Enter key.
For Example:
If you wanted to run the CHKDSK utility on your F: Drive and fix error found on your Personal Storage unit, you would type:
chkdsk f: /f (or /r switch can be used)
4. To exit the Command Window, type "exit" and press the Enter key. The process is complete.
-----------------------------

Also:

-------------------------------
Problem:
Cannot access information on External drive and may receive the following errors:

* Drive is recognized as an unformatted or "RAW" drive.
* The operation could not be Performed Because of an I/O Device Error
* Parameter is incorrect

Cause:
The file system on the drive may be corrupted. This can be caused by a variety of reasons but the two most common reasons are improper disconnection of the external drive and using FAT32 as the file system in a Windows 2000 or XP system.

Solution:

The following are recommendations to prevent these issues from happening in the future.

1. Format the External drive to NTFS if using Windows XP or Windows 2000

2. To disconnect the External drive from computer it is highly recommended to use the "safely eject icon" located in the task tray (lower left corner). The "safely eject icon" looks like a green arrow with a box underneath. Use this before you remove the drive from your system. Here is a link that more fully describes how to properly remove the external drives from your system:

Answer ID 683: How to turn on or turn off the 1394 or USB External Storage unit to ensure it is recognized in a PC system.

3. Enable the "Optimize for Quick Removal" option in device manager. To enable this function, go to device manager and highlight the external drive listed under disk drives. Right click on the drive and select Properties. From there, go to Policies, and then check the option to Optimize for Quick Removal.
------------------------------

BUT NOTE THAT IF YOU FORMAT YOUR DRIVE YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR DATA.

Good luck.

Edit: Try gege's suggestion first.

pah68 · Post by **pah68** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:08 pm

tinana wrote:Grrrrr.

If I lost 50,000 tracks, you'd bet you'd hear more than Grrrr from me.
I'd be swearing and jumping around so much that a blushing Ravingcowboy would be shaken out of his chair on the other side of the planet in Texas.

Post by **Peke** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 8:08 pm

If Your File system Was FAT32 on EXT HDD, someone that know what is doing can bring it back using Norton Diskeditor (2004 version I think was last that can work in DOS), Win98SE Boot disk and DOS Prompt. Have made that >40 fixes that way.
FAT32 can be accessed when and how you like, most unsecured and easy to fix File System.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 1:16 am

alanl wrote:This also happened to me.

Read all of this message before trying anything, and anything you try is at your own risk. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Try running CHKDSK. I picked this up somewhere:

Edit: Try gege's suggestion first.

CHKDSK should be the *last* thing to be done!

If the data is really important to you, buy a new drive and make an exact copy of the damaged drive. Invest in decent software that can do this. Chances are, the software will also have tools that can fix the problem (on the clone first!).

gege · Post by **gege** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 1:38 pm

Anonymous wrote:
alanl wrote:This also happened to me.

Read all of this message before trying anything, and anything you try is at your own risk. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Try running CHKDSK. I picked this up somewhere:

Edit: Try gege's suggestion first.
CHKDSK should be the *last* thing to be done!

If the data is really important to you, buy a new drive and make an exact copy of the damaged drive. Invest in decent software that can do this. Chances are, the software will also have tools that can fix the problem (on the clone first!).

This is absolutely right! The more you try to 'fix' the disk, the more it is likely to be unrecoverable.
A good recovery software just *reads* the disk. Not a single bit is written to it during the recovery process. This the safest thing to do if you want to preserve your precious files!

tinana · Post by **tinana** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 1:56 pm

Thanks everyone for the information. The Seagate disk diagnostic utility suggests there aren't any physical problems with the disk, so I think my file system got corrupted somehow, probably after not properly disconnecting the usb HDD via the taskbar.

Gege, hi, and thanks for the tip (most of those tracks I lost are from 50's and 60's brazilian artists! ;^D ), but I tried both Getbackdata for NTFS and FAT but neither can see or recognize the drive, I imagine because it's now in RAW format. How did you make this work?

Post by **Peke** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 6:03 pm

Have you tried some of Acronis tools. I find them great and maybe in Trial you can fix the problem.

tinana · Post by **tinana** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 8:48 pm

Thanks for the info, Peke. I'm looking at that software now. Also, it looks like another external HDD is going bad: my other 50,000 tracks. Now I'm wondering if there's a problem with my USB or Windows XP.

Post by **Peke** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:12 pm

That is not coincidence! Two HDDs on same PC.

Before you try anything to fix get them out from USB Ext Box and connect them to PC Directly (If you can) to see if they act same. That will narrow the problem.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:17 pm

It seems that usb/firewire drives have a tendency to fail.

My first external drive experience was harrowing.

I bought a generic usb/firewire hardrive box at the local compusa etc, a 300 gig maxtor and a week later it was failing with delayed write failures.

It turns out that alot of generic usb/firewire chips don't have very good support for large hard drives.

This leads to delayed write and partition failures.

It's quite a wide spread problem.

I've since moved to only using external drives that have enclosures from their manufacturer and I haven't had any problems since. (meaning buying an external drive with name brand western digital, seagate, etc)

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl ... te+failure

I have had luck with a couple programs that can restore partitions and/or deleted files.

Testdisk is free and has recovered failed/deleted partitions for me before.

http://www.partitionsupport.com/utilities.htm

active undelete works, but its not free, and it works on file recovery basis not necessarily restoring a whole partition

some other useful links
http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/as ... detail.htm
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm? ... 139&page=6

tinana · Post by **tinana** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:49 pm

Thanks technojnky, I had delayed write errors with the first drive before it failed and now I'm having the same problem with the second, both Seagate externals. I'll check your tips out.

tinana · Post by **tinana** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:50 pm

Using testdisk I'm finally able to see the data on my disk and it's all there, as I hoped...and suspected...all along. Thanks again to all.

Luckily, I had just bought a an external 500gig HDD so I can copy my files over to it in order to reformat the old drive.

What's got me concerned is I don't know why this happened in the first place and until I find out I can't prevent it from happening again.

External HDD converted to RAW, lost 50,000 songs

External HDD converted to RAW, lost 50,000 songs

Re: External HDD converted to RAW, lost 50,000 songs