Backup HD partition not being read

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by cswimc, Dec 9, 2009.

  1. cswimc

    cswimc MDL Novice

    Dec 9, 2009
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    Last night I used my USB HD to back up all my important files, and the. Proceeded to format my desktop and install windows 7.

    Today my external hard drive asks me to format it so it can be read! It worked last night after I installed windows 7 and I didn't have a chance to copy all my files over. Now it's asking me to format?!?!

    I did some research and got a valid copy of Active partition recovery. Now when I scan the hard drive with Active Partition Recovery, it shows the corrupted partition that windows won't open. But I can't restore the files. I can see them with this software so I know they are still there!

    How can I recover the files? I was thinking of troubleshooting more with active partition recovery, but ifthat fails, I thought maybe I can do a 'quick format' in windows and not write anything to the hard drive. Then I can maybe use another data recovery tool and retrieve the files like that.

    I'm in a jam and freaking out because I have some very important documents that I need on there both for work and classes!

    Thanks in advance for any help!!!

    In the mean time I am reading a lot to see if I can find a solution and I am making sure that. Nothing gets written to my external HD.
     
  2. genuine555

    genuine555 MDL Expert

    Oct 3, 2009
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  3. urie

    urie Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 21, 2007
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    @ genuine555, i wouldn't format the drive its ok trying to recover a partition when you have formatted by mistake.

    @ cswimc, do a search for spinrite or hddregenerator try them on your drive first.
     
  4. groovesection

    groovesection MDL Novice

    Aug 27, 2009
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    Sounds like a simple rebuild of the MBR on the Ext HDD would fix this
     
  5. Hawkbill

    Hawkbill MDL Novice

    Dec 20, 2009
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    Active@ makes a great set of tools you can download trials of them. They work great. I cant remember all the products but here are a few. Here is a link to the list of products they offer. Good stuff I was able to recover pictures from a windows 98 partition that I deleted long ago. It can see almost every partition you have ever had. With the possiblility of restoring those partitions to active.

    My post count is too low but google active@
    Active@Undelete
    Active@killdisk
     
  6. SLICuser

    SLICuser MDL Novice

    Dec 26, 2009
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    Actually the best Recovery program I've used is Rstudio network ed. Which you can find an older version on BT just about anywhere. I've thought it is such a great prod I dropped the 750 for it. (and had a client pay for it:) gota love working in the moron rescue (IT) industry)


    Also the unformatted error is a sign of a failing drive. I would get a donor drive and use ghost -ir (or an other raw imaging prog) and cloning it before you get the wonderful click of death trying to do a data recovery on it.
     
  7. unity

    unity MDL Novice

    Nov 2, 2009
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    Acronis True Image
     
  8. urie

    urie Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 21, 2007
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    Fine for doing backup and restore but not for the scenario recovering files.