Absolutely NEED SOME COMPUTER GURUS

NSGUITAR

Member
Oct 26, 2009
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Hey guys!

So this needs to be fixed literally asap... I've had it with a guy for over 2 weeks now, and I've gotten nothing fixed.


I have a western digital 2TB external hard drive.

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Anyways.. I took it down to Jersey to Machine Shop with me so I could work on stuff in my spare time on my own.. But the drive was not formatted by MAC... That was ok.. I just told myself I'd do it when I got back home.

So I get back home.. Plug my drive in.... I hear the typical "BEE BOOP" sound when you plug USB device, but nothing is recognized... Nothing

I go into disc management, and it shows up there, but I cannot for the life of me, nor can this guy, figure out how to access my data.

I've bought another identical hard drive so once it comes to it, I can just transfer the files onto there.


The onlything I've heard from this dude is that there is a boot sector problem.. I literally am not very savvy with computers, so if anybody.. ANYBODY could give any information about this, I'd more than appreciate it.


And yes... I was stupid enough to not back this drive up.. Obviously.. That's why there is a problem.. But I do take this as a learning situation and plan to double back everything up from here on out.
 
You can copy the boot sector (which is the first bytes of the drive) from the working HDD to the other.

Tell him about this: DD

It's a 10min fix.

But PAY ATTENTION. That can erase the whole disk.
 
You need some sort of hard drive recovery software. I stupidly unplugged my audio drive by accident one day without ejecting it first. When I plugged it back in, it didn't work. Managed to secure all of my data via Disk Warrior. Thank christ for that! I'm on a Mac, YMMV though.
 
That's not true. You could possibly mount it in another OS. Do you know if it was a FAT32 or NTFS partition?

There was definitely mention of NTFS..

I will literally pay $1000 to do what it takes to fix this drive. So don't hold back on suggestions.
 
You need some sort of hard drive recovery software. I stupidly unplugged my audio drive by accident one day without ejecting it first. When I plugged it back in, it didn't work. Managed to secure all of my data via Disk Warrior. Thank christ for that! I'm on a Mac, YMMV though.

I honestly think that's exactly what happened! Because in Jersey, I was plugged into a mac.. Then I had to leave it unattended for about 15 mins, when i came back it was unplugged without being ejected.. I didn't know that that REALLy fucks things up..
 
NTFS is read only on a mac unless you have special software like paragon NTFS installed, so you would not have been able to copy your data to the drive on a mac if it was NTFS

but yes, unplugging the drive before it is ejected can damage it, I also was able to recover my data with disk warrior because the data was still there, just not readable by the OS for whatever reason
 
No,no, you're right! It was FAT32 for sure. He was trying to explain the difference to me, but he was poor at communicating, so I didn't really catch his drift.
 
sometimes when i cant get a flash drive, external drive, to be recognize, i restart the computer, wait for everything to load, then i connect it, and it works.
 
@arv_foh NTFS is read on every major operation system.

@NSGUITAR my solution is the simplest/quickest/safest. you can also DD the broken drive in the working one in archived format. that way you will be 99% sure you wont loose anything.
 
Since you dont boot from your external drive, a damaged boot sector wont matter.
The first thing that you should do is plug the drive into a PC and see if the PC recognises the drive.
If the PC recognises the drive then you should be OK , just use the PC to burn the data onto a DVD.
Dont do anything radical like using dd as mentioned above.
Another option is to plug the drive into a Linux machine, if Linux recognises the drive then use it to burn a DVD.
 
Since you dont boot from your external drive, a damaged boot sector wont matter.
The first thing that you should do is plug the drive into a PC and see if the PC recognises the drive.
If the PC recognises the drive then you should be OK , just use the PC to burn the data onto a DVD.
Dont do anything radical like using dd as mentioned above.
Another option is to plug the drive into a Linux machine, if Linux recognises the drive then use it to burn a DVD.

I'm pretty sure the guy working on it actually plugged it into a linux.


The problem is more about getting those files onto another source.. Right now, my computer will recognize it, but only if I go into control panel--- device manager.

That's the ONLY time it shows up.. It doesn't show up if I restart computer then plug in, or anything else though. Like when I go to my computer, the drive does not show up..
 
@ScootBaloo The boot sector in an external HDD contains information about the partitioning. It will matter.

@NSGUITAR Don't ignore my posts. Told ya the easiest way to fix it.
 
Two caveats to LBTM's post is that you have to know which drive is which, otherwise you overwrite the wrong one. Second the drive you write to has to be as big or bigger than the source drive. DD will take a very long time on a 1TB drive.

Does diskmanager show a drive with either an unrecognized or unlabeled partition?
 
From the little bit that I scanned through this topic, it does indeed look like you need to assign a drive letter to the partition/drive.

Right Click on MY COMPUTER / COMPUTER
Manage
Disk Management
Right Click on The Disk/Partition without a letter
Change Drive Letter and Paths...

should be easy to do from there.
 
@NSGUITAR Just tell the guy about DD in linux. If he doesn't know what that is find another guy.

@sprack you're right.
 
@NSGUITAR Just tell the guy about DD in linux. If he doesn't know what that is find another guy.

@sprack you're right.

Dude, to be honest.. I've taken it to 3 separate sources now, and have got nothing but idiots, so... Meaningless to say-- I don't really trust ANYONE to fix my drive out here.. They just all want my money. At this point, I'm willing to pay YOU just for some help...
 
Also.. Some other useful info (I think).

The last guy to look at it said that "The boot sectors all went to 0"... Whatever that means
 
Also.. Some other useful info (I think).

The last guy to look at it said that "The boot sectors all went to 0"... Whatever that means

Whatever. Do not let him do anything. He will probably break the rest of the disk.

Check your PMs please.