Recover corrupt hard drive?

Question

I have a Western Digital 1TB hard drive which I accidentally dropped yesterday...Since then, at first it would keep connecting and disconnecting...the sound effect that Windows plays when something connects or disconnects would keep repeating. Now, it says Location not found, W:\ is not accessible, and parameter is incorrect. It says I can't access the disk without formatting it...which I haven't done.

If it matters, it remembers that it's W:, and it remembers that it's a My Book (the name of it from Western Digital)...That's about it though, it doesn't remember what I named it (what it said in My Computer) or anything else...it just says Local Disk. I don't know if I should do error-checking or something like that...I'm just not touching anything without advice.

There are a lot of programs suggested online that recover drives, but I don't know where to start. I don't want to risk what was on the drive, which is *possibly* replaceable stuff, but I want to recover it if I can. If anybody could help my situation, please do! I was in immediate shock when I saw that it wasn't reading...I also don't have much money to spare on this, so if there are any solutions, preferably free, that would be great...Lots of thumbs up and down please so I know who has good words of advice. Thanks everyone!!

Answer 1

Hi, Sean.



It's possible to recover your formatted information. But the best way is to try some recovery programs, and this is the most effective way. No matter deleting or formatting, they won't make the data in the hard drive erased permanently. These data are just not accessible at the short moment. If you deleted important data in your hard drive, they are not deleted as a matter of fact just the index entry or FAT or NTFS marked the data as free space for new data to save. If you formatted the hard drive, you simply rewrited or updated the FAT table or NTFS table which manage all the data storage process.



As to Free recovery programs, you may learn more from this blog entry,

http://filerecoveryhelp.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/5-excellent-file-recovery-software-to-restore-lost-files/



And if those freeware can't help, you can turn to this professional format recovery program,

http://www.disk-utilities.com/data-recovery/format-recovery.html



Hope they will be helpful to you.



Regards

Answer 2

I have never worked with super size hard drives, and I would not call myself an expert; but I think the fact that it has a large capacity might work to your advantage. Obviously, from what you say; it is a physical mechanical problem and not a matter of format, partition, system DOS, etc. The first thing I would suggest is that you lose your fear of trying things out to fix it yourself. The only way you could make things worse is if you dropped it again. If I were in this situation, I would do some tests to find out if the drive (Disk) only suffered some partial minor damage such as bad sector/s; or if the motor and/or needle mechanisms are physically tweaked to where they cant move over the disc to read it. One way to find out would be to try to install or record any data on it now, and see if you can retrieve it.

What does the Disk Manager say about this drive? What Operating System (XP, Vista,) are you using?

The fact that it shows up as "Local Disc" is a good sign. Go ahead and right click on it, and run Check Disc (Error Checking) from the Windows tools under Properties. It's a good place to start.

Answer 3

i've personally had issues with hard drives, mostly due to my errors



but if it disconnects and reconnects all the time and still does it, its gonna suck



the program i used many times is GetBackData for NTFS (there is one for FAT if that's what you are using)



the MyBook can be opened if you want to use it as a straight disk inside, i've done that before and it might be the only way for you to be able to read it



GetBackData takes a whole lot of time but make sure if you can get it to read anything to NOT write anything on the drive before its completed cause its just gonna make the process a lot longer



you will most likely be faced with a few options once you get the program going as far as table of contents go, just make sure to take the one you remember to be the most current.



and of course i wouldn't keep my hopes up.. that way you arent too disappointed if it fails



but forget about professional data recovery, they range in the thousands dollars.

Answer 4

Depends on what you name corrupt. If you imply that you've unhealthy sectors it it then sure you perhaps capable to get better a few bits. However if the dossier it is self is corrupt then the reply might be no. If the force has thoroughly failed then the reply might be no. That might have too be performed via a expert corporation who does it. That may also be very luxurious or even the there is not any assurance they might get whatever off of it. That's whilst you ought to weigh up the price of retrieval to the knowledge on it.

Answer 5

Recover data of the hard drive easily. You must watch the video here for further reference.

http://youtu.be/2U8QPKH6ZP4