So here's what's going down -

Windows sees the drive, But thinks it's raw. I know the data has to still be there.
Knoppix refuses to mount the drive.
These seem to point to that - The drive someone has power or a connection, so it's not completely dead. But the file system has been... erased? Corrupted? What controls that?

Is there anyway to reinstate the filesystem and keep the data intact?





Okay - I had just finished a ridiculously huge video project. A 'Thumb Wars' style video... with my face digitized onto my thumb. A good 20 hours of work, due tomorrow. Just after I had finished, my computer was running slowly. I had just watched the finished avi. 2 gigs of data. I restart - everythings fine as I boot into windows.
When I go into My Computer and click on my D drive (where all my data is stored)... It says 'This drive is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?

I booted into knoppix, and it said the drive could not be mounted. Please tell me I'm in the middle of a nightmare. This is ridiculous.

Please, I'm desperate here. I'm going to take out the drive and put it into another comptuer... to see if... I don't know. I'm almost positive the drive just flat out crapped out from overuse (EVEN THOUGH ITS A NEW DRIVE, SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET A VERY ANGRY LETTER). If that's so, does anyone have any suggestions for retrieving the data soon, other than shipping it off to some bs data recovery service?


- A very desperate whte rbt

Try the "foremost" tool. I'm not sure it is supports AVI, but it might.

What file system was being used on the drive? If you go to properties on the drive within Windows now, does it say it's RAW for a filesystem? If that's the case, you may be able to recover data from it.

It was NTFS, it now says RAW.

might want to check if it totally crapped out with utilites from the companies website before you go investing a bunch of time trying to recover data.

Yes, what tamoneya said.
Confirm all drive conections are good, run manfacturer's utility.
Decide if there needs to be a plan B from there.

All connections are fine. When I run the Maxtor Powermax utility, it freezes. When I run the built in 'IDE drive inspection', it says that my drives are both fine. I'm not sure what's wrong with the powermax utility, but I'm almost positive the drive itself is intact. The file system has just gone kaput. Now please - you folks keep talkin' about 'possible recoveries' and 'plan Bs'.. fill me in. I'm stressin' out. Please.

My next question would be, "Does the drive work in another PC?".

Yeah, i was really hoping it wouldn't come to that... because this is a horribly structured dell case where the drive is hiding behind my other hard drive. But if you think another computer could really treat this drive differently, I'll try it.

Does anyone else think I should put it in another computer? If this computer (on two separate operating systems) doesn't recognize my drive's file system, why would another?

Use a mepis live cd and alternate click on the desktop> configure desktop> behavior> devices> check show unmounted HDD and Mounted HDD then click the partition and you should be able to recover and copy the files to other media using k3b. Mepis has never let me down when I want to recover files from a HDD, except in the case of a head crash (if your hearing tick, tick, tick from the drive its dead.)

Another Maxtor bites the dust...

I feel sorry for you.

Honestly, I don't know how that company stays in business.

downloading mepis now...

If drive is not clicking you are OK.

The drive has just lost its filesystem information. I've dealt with this before with a customers drive. I had some links tucked away in a folder. Check them out...

NTFS Changes to RAW
RAW Filesystem Recovery
Partition Recovery Tool

Scott

Thank you very much, scott. That software is fantastic. I was only able to recover the 1st minute of the 8 minute video, but it's enough to prove that I've got something going... I'm guessing it was a buffer overflow? It took the last 7 minutes of my video and left only 83% of my other data intact. Anyone have any insight as to what caused that and how i can prevent it in the future?

Did you create your video in Windows or in Linux? If Linux: NTFS support in Linux is not reliable for writing, which might have caused the problem.