I think my second hard drive just broke.

It's visible in my control panel, but in explorer, if I press the little + next to it, it don't show the directories in it. If I click on the main directory and try to open another folder, it say it's either broken or unreadable.

The drive is about 4 months old at max. It was working nice yesterday...

If I click on it in control panel and try to run scandisk on it, when I click "start" it just close the window and do nothing.

What do you think?

Edit: Now when I click on the hard drive itself I don't even see my list of folders, it just say it's either broken or unreadable...

Edit: In properties, it say it has 0 of 0 space left... :(

Please tell me it's just an odd configuration problem or a virus...

[ 10-06-2004, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

<font color=skyblue>I cannot help, but I am hoping the best for you!

</font>

Man, I wish I could, but I think your spindle went out of alignment. That's sometimes a repairable problem. Sometimes. Did you have any important data on the HD in question?

Man, I wish I could, but I think your spindle went out of alignment. That's sometimes a repairable problem. Sometimes. Did you have any important data on the HD in question? </font>[/QUOTE]It was my storage and backup hardrive...

I really doubt you'll keep anything, as the re-aligning process involves purging FAT, effectively formatting the hard drive. I don't even know if it's what I think it is. I just can't think of an easy, simple, optimistic answer for you, Luvian.

What can I do now?

Take it into a shop and ask them what exactly is wrong with it, and can they help. Unless you've got a very precise set of tools(costing a real lot of cash) you can't really do anything at home.
EDIT: Fresh Diagnose might help get the problem identified.

[ 10-06-2004, 06:15 PM: Message edited by: Bozos of Bones ]

I downloaded it, went into Devices, and when I select the Drive, about all it show is "accesible: no"

Edit: Another program I use that's like the one you just recomended see the parition on my disk as "LDM"

[ 10-06-2004, 06:33 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

I asked around, and went to my hard drive manufacturer's website to get support software, and apparently, it might just be the header or something that's missing, and I might be able to recover with a recovery program.

I'll try that, if I can find a free one.

well if its 4 months old it should have a warranty still.

A missing drive header? Sure it is possible, but it never crossed my mind. I have no idea how that would even happen to a HDD that's been working normally the day before. Was there an earthquake or something?

One thing to check... all the cables that connect it. If you've been doing any work in the box, you may have accidentally knocked a connection loose.

You may also try going down to the command prompt and seeing what happens when you run fdisk against it. It may be possible to just rebuild the header, if that's all that's missing.

Unfortunately, things don't sound promising, so some of what I'm thinking may just be grasping at straws... good luck...

Yeah, I've been told it might be the header, as I made scans with support tools, and apparently the surface of the disk is perfect, and the test detected the real size of my hard drive, and the S.M.A.R.T. test worked fine too, only the Data test failed.

I have no idea how that would happen either. I looked inside my computer and the cable are all apparently connected perfectly.

If I manage to save my data I'm certainly going to make some backup somewhere else incase it mess up again.

There wasn't an hearthquake, but I did move the computer around the day before. I was extremly prudent and always left the computer in it's usual position, I didn't even shake it, but oh well... It's the only time it could probably have happened I guess.

Edit: I wouldn't know how to rebuild the header. I think I'll wait until I get a safe recovery program, I could mess up things even more otherwise.

[ 10-07-2004, 08:05 AM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

Sounds like the drive is accessible, but not the partition. Corruption like this being caused by software is rare at best. Regardless, problems like this with a disk most likely point to a hardware failure of some sort. I would highly recommend getting a new drive under your warranty. They should send it to you first. From there, either copy the files over or use an imaging tool such as Ghost. Then send the problem child back to it's parents. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I scaned my frive with Easy Recovery.

It took 9 hours and a half, and then I closed it by mistake! [img]redface.gif[/img]

It did see files btw.

Ok, so I scaned it again, it went way faster.

I was able to access about 90% of my files. Of that I kept 50 gigs. It took 4 hours to transfert.

Everything seem to be working. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 10-10-2004, 02:04 AM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

That's great Luvian. ;) Great job!

You know after that... I'd be thinking of getting a new HD... or replacing it if it still had warranty [img]smile.gif[/img]

I'm not sure if it's still under warranty. I didn't keep the receipt anyway...

I'll just try formating it and see what happen.

A fromat should restore everything, including the header. Glad to hear that it wasn't a catastrophe [img]smile.gif[/img]

now back up critical files to CD
I know i've regretted not doing that many many times, and i've lost unrecoverable files. Glad to hear your situation worked out though.