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[zippytq]

Hello all,

I am having issues trying to recover my drive. Here is how I got to where I am.

System: Win 7 EC 7100, with two ST31000528AS. One has the OS, My Docs and Music(C. The other drive (E gets Video recordings from MS Media Center (MSMC). Everything was working fine for about a month. 

Today I added a new recording request and MSMC told me there was no space (I knew I had only a hand full of recordings so there should have been plenty of space). I closed MSMC and rebooting the computer...just in case. Alas i got a Bootmgr error during the reboot. I repaired it using the Win 7 Install disk and the system rebooting ok on its own.

I launched MSMC and it came up fine. I cheked my recordings and there where gone. Eeek. Looks like the E: disk was missing.

Launched MS Disk Management and the Disk shows up as Not Initialized. I tried to initialize it but got a message saying it could not be performed because of a I/O device error.

I then downloaded SeaTools and it shows both drives (actually shows each of them listed twice for some reason). I ran the SMART test and C drive passed and the E drive failed.

Any advice on what to do next? Thanks.

[fzabkar]

Initialising your disc is something that you do *not* want to do, unless you are prepared to wipe your drive and start afresh.

See this Microsoft tech note:

Disk status descriptions:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/dm_status_disk.mspx

"The Not Initialized status occurs when a disk does not contain a valid signature. After you install a new disk, Windows XP must write a master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) before you can create partitions on the disk. When you first start Disk Management after installing a new disk, a wizard appears that provides a list of the new disks detected."

It appears to me that your OS cannot read the very first sector on drive E:

Can you post a full SMART report, including the values of all the attributes?

You may need some data recovery software such as GetDataBack to retrieve your files. Otherwise you could try multipass cloning software such as Linux dd_rescue (freeware) to backup as much data as possible to a new drive, and then use your data recovery software to repair the clone.

[zippytq]

Thaks for the reply back. Here is the report. i noticed nothing is showing up in the attribute name column that is probabaly not good. I will take a look at getdataback next. 

S.M.A.R.T. status
Date: 2009/10/26 09:09:30

Model Name: ST31000528AS
Serial number:  6VP0857R
Capacity:  0.0 GB
Firmware:  CC34
Drive interface: IDE

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Attribute Name                       Threshold     Value       Worst     Raw value 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
172 (AC) Unknown                                 0           154         94    115189762589441
94  (5E) Unknown                                 0           167         179   153940725280963
160 (A0) Unknown                                 0           211         18    246443355798528
229 (E5) Unknown                                 0           159         135   107755988019392
81  (51) Unknown                                 0           40          45    229121477225218
94  (5E) Unknown                                 0           99          234   192414889537720
236 (EC) Unknown                                 0           208         151   44981366893568
94  (5E) Unknown                                 0           48          233   151733191747782
123 (7B) Unknown                                 0           33          163   185456613121280
159 (9F) Unknown                                 0           162         110   117650433148958
58  (3A) Unknown                                 0           173         94    27407594844417
21  (15) Unknown                                 0           228         88    109957044904135
138 (8A) Unknown                                 0           248         55    115448180905218
30  (1E) Unknown                                 0           173         239   183619306985548
214 (D6) Unknown                                 0           169         94    62030053222145
147 (93) Unknown                                 0           157         108   150642824628286
146 (92) Unknown                                 0           243         20    35959244436480
52  (34) Unknown                                 0           240         29    250694535592169
160 (A0) Unknown                                 0           139         134   106229781582336
177 (B1) Unknown                                 0           165         103   189125817569349
154 (9A) Unknown                                 0           187         26     60032145152
144 (90) Unknown                                 0           4           224   172629210515530
129 (81) Unknown                                 0           165         154   18067931971840
94  (5E) Unknown                                 0           183         19    189125568098460
40  (28) Unknown                                 0           165         94    18225307737601
229 (E5) Unknown                                 0           178         74    91269033926696
46  (2E) Unknown                                 0           144         148   247073846330624
30  (1E) Unknown                                 0           16          152   23092000061457
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[fzabkar]

The SMART data are nonsensical. Furthermore, your drive's capacity is being detected as 0.0 GB, so I doubt that any data recovery software will be able to help you. :-(

[zippytq]

Yep looks like you are right. So does that mean the drive is shot? Bummer.

[fzabkar]

Try asking the data recovery experts at HDD Guru:

http://forum.hddguru.com/hard-disk-drives-data-recovery-and-repair-f1.html