Hardrive in IDE changed itself to RAW

Lady_K

This is an old win xp pro sp3 laptop, the disk that's gone raw is showing information when I press to safely unplug usb, it says its

HDS722516VLAT20 usb device but looking this up on the net its saying its 160gb so I'm confused, could there have been smaller versions of this made or would it definitely be a 160gb. I have not opened the case I've just gone with the info shown when I try to safely remove hardware

http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-HDS722516VLAT20-160GB-Hard-Drive/dp/B00020YWV6

When I pressed quit I looked in the list and thought it might be the right thing to choose change geometry of disk so I'm now in that section and it looks like I can update the cylinders, heads, sectors, sector size but I don't know how I can find the right things to put in, where can I find this information? could I get it from the internet from the hardrives info?

It does say check hardisk size jumpers settings and bios detection so could this be a bios thing? it was an old hardrive

S0litaire

It's a long shot!! I'm not counting the drive as beyond hope yet!! ^_^

It might be the Old laptop you are using.

Plug the USB drive into your main PC and use "TestDisk" there.

It won't damage your main PC.

Just take your time and see what the program tells you about the USB disk. (Is it still being reported as small than you expect or at the correct size?)

Lady_K

Well it still says check the above in my last post because hardisk seems too small.

I will try it in this newer win7 laptop now

Lady_K

Tried it in the newer win7 laptop and its exactly the same, same message about the drive seeming too small.

Does anyone know how to fix that because it does say if the geography of the drive is incorrect testdisk will not work at all so I presume that will be the reason partition manager wont work either

danthemoneysavingman

I'm pretty sure you'll get nothing off this disk. Sad but very probably true. Once the partition table's gone I've never been able to get anything useful of disks where this has happened. You've tried a number of pieces of software which all say there's nothing there. I'd take that as a big clue you'll get nothing off it.


This may makes others all the more determined to try and prove me wrong and maybe they will but I'd say the chances are very slim.
Wishing you luck nonetheless... but I'd move on.

Lady_K

I have tried recuva, testdisk and easeus.

On easeus the partition manager didn't work but the data recovery did and almost all the files were there undamaged. I saved 2gb and they are all as new when opened but its almost £60 to get the rest, so there must be a way to recover the files but perhaps not repair the partition its just finding how to do it

S0litaire

Give it one last go with "GetDataBack for NTFS"
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
If it can see things to recover let me know!

Lady_K

Thanks, I have installed it and I'm not quite sure which to select of these as it says describe your data loss scenario

I don't know use default settings
perform a quick scan (sudden partition loss fdisk)
systematic file system damage eg format or fdisk
sustained file system damage eg new file system was installed
I want to recover deleted files

Im not sure which to choose because I didn't delete the files and it seems the partition is unrepairable anyway and that one might just try to repair the partition, all I want is the files off the drive

S0litaire

OK the program will take a few hours to run so select
"perform quick scan" and press next.
it will show you how long it will take.
you might want to leave it running overnight.

Lady_K

I did that and it went through in a few seconds not hours, it shows a lot of the files but not as many as easeus and a lot are just numbers or empty.

Should I be changing the current options before running it? I am also only checking the disk itself even though it said for best results do the entire physical drive which doesn't list the faulty drive at all its the laptops hardrive