Need Help: External HD Suddenly Dead

[Melodeath]

I have an external hard drive (NTFS) hooked up via firewire to a firewire audio interface, hooked up to my Macbook Pro with OS X 10.6.4. I accidentally turned off my firewire interface before ejecting the hard drive. (I have done this before, it's hard to remember I have my hard drive on sometimes, and nothing bad has happened). When I turned the hard drive back on, the mac says "the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." I can pick "Initialize..." "Ignore" or "Eject"

If I click Initialize, I can't repair the disk or anything because it is NTFS.

I tried booting into Windows 7, and it does not recognize the drive either.

Please help me.

I also tried using USB instead of firewire, but I have the same problem.

Everything sounds normal with the drive. Just the usual spinning sound.

In Windows, it says I need to initialize the drive, but I am worried that doing so will erase my data (assuming it's still on the drive)

 

[updog]

Did you try if it still works with the Macbook Pro?

 

[sprack]

Does fdisk show a partition table?

 

[Melodeath]

Did you try if it still works with the Macbook Pro?

It does not. The same error keeps popping up saying the disk can't be read.

Sprack,
I did not check. How do I do that?

 

[greyskull]

open the case and see if you can pop the drive in either computer to see if its the drive or the enclosure thats gone;

 

[jeid]

I had the same problem not so long ago. I used a program to fix it... Diskwarrior. My external drive wasn't NTFS though, so I don't know how successful you'll be with that program.

 

[jeid]

Also, don't initialize. Initialize is another way of saying format or delete

 

[::XeS::]

It happens sometime when you turn off the disk without un-mounting it.
There is a solution I think...try to google it. It happens to me some years ago and I solved it

 

[Melodeath]

I googled all night. haven't found anything useful

I guess it's possible the case got fried from a power blip when I turned the interface off and on

 

[jeid]

Seriously mate, search for disk warrior. It'll fix it

 

[Melodeath]

Their site makes no mention of HD file formats. I assume they must only work with HFS+

 

[jeid]

I wonder if this will sort your problem

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/features.html

It's confusing as it says for Mac OSX 8.0, but the software is version 8 and it supports Snow Leopard.

 

[Melodeath]

Hmm, that looks quite useful, but I don't think it will solve the problem here.

I just called acomData, the manufacturer of my drive. They said my issue being caused by not properly ejecting the disk is very uncommon, but it can happen. Doing so seems to have erased or corrupted the partition table. The drive will need to be initialized before I can use it again, so I should try data recovery, and there is a good chance my data is still in tact. Very honest and nice tech support over there.

So, what's the best data recovery software?

 

[jeid]

From what I read, it's less common on the NTFS drives. It's happened to me on my HFS drive and I shat a brick. All of my session files are on there.

Good luck mate

 

[Gonzo666]

try testdisk

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

saved my ass more than one time