posted
So I rebooted my computer, 'cos it was getting very slow, and find that on coming back up, it no longer sees the external hard drive where I've stored all my data and, worse, custom analysis software. Which took me several weeks to write to its current state. I am hoping this is merely a small software glitch. Fingers crossed.
[ May 01, 2006, 04:08 PM: Message edited by: King of Men ]
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Wow! Good luck. I've rarely had a problem with external drives. But once I ended up having to reformat and start from scratch. OUCH!
Have you got another computer you can plug it into to check it out?
Is this a USB drive? My problem with one of those was not disconnecting it (releasing from Windows) before unplugging it once. It wiped the drive's index and made it unreadable.
Anyway, I hope you have better experience than I did that one time.
Hopefully it's just a glitch with your main system that's easily fixed.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Depending on how badly you want what's on that drive, there are lots of data recovery places that can get data back from broken or corrupted drives.
Of course, the service can cost thousands of dollars, so...
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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You should go into the Device Manager (right click on My Computer > Properties... > Hardware > Device Manager) to see if there are any error messages. The data on the hard drive is probably safe, but if the enclosure isn't working any more, you could at least try to plug the HD in directly to the computer, if you have any free IDE channels.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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Whew - turns out the guy who installed the hard drive didn't set up the automounting properly. So the first reboot in a month or so does Weird Stuff. But the competent computer guy fixed it. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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