Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[kevb636]

The drive will not show up in My Computer or on Disc Management screen however the drive does show up in BIOS and in device manager. It has worked fine as a storage drive and the issue has only occured since the connection of an addittional drive but I don't think this is the issue as I have connected it to another PC with the same results

Drive in question is a Maxtor Diamondmax 250GB STM3250820AS which I have had for about 3 years now.

[fzabkar]

Is the drive detected with the correct model number and correct capacity?

If so, could we see the partition table and boot sector with Microsoft's Sector Inspector?
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SecInspect.zip

Extract the above archive to the one folder and execute the SIrun.bat file. The procedure will generate a report file named SIout.txt which you can then upload to a file sharing service.

If you suspect a hardware fault, try SeaTools:
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

You could also try a more comprehensive SMART diagnostic. Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows / Linux):
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:
http://hddscan.com/

See this article for SMART info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

[kevb636]

I have ran sector inspector and have uploaded file here

[url=http://www.filefactory.com/file/b33hf89/n/SIout.txt]Download SIout.txt from FileFactory.com[/url]

I am currently trying to run a partition recovery tool to see if it can find anything if not I think it may be hardware but hopefully the test above will shed some light on it.

[fzabkar]

The first thing I notice is that there are "HFS+", "GPT" and "EFI" text strings in sector 0 of PHYSICALDRIVE1. I've never seen a GUID Partition Table, but the text would suggest that the drive was built on a Mac. Being a GPT rather than an MBR, this suggests that you should be running Vista or later.

I notice also that the end of the drive is being reported as follows:

"LBN 488392065 [Outside Detected Geometry Limits]"

This would suggest that Sector Inspector, an MBR tool, is misinterpreting the GPT.

Sorry, but I don't know what else to try other than GPT-aware data recovery utilities.

[kevb636]

Issue resolved. I ran Partition Table Doctor and it was able to find and the partition and repair the table, so I now have everything back

The machine I had the drive conencted to and ran the tool on was one I got from a friend who does use a Mac and I believe the main drive in it was used in her Mac at some point so maybe it was picking that up from the main drive. Although it is strange as I have fully formatted the drive and installed XP since.

Thanks for your help