hard drive fail - unsafe removal of device

[shadowsong]

i have a western digital 200 gb drive, used as a slave drive on win2k. while attempting to copy some files to that drive last night, the copy failed and i got an "unsafe removal of device message". when i looked at the drive in the my computer window, it showed  33gb used, which is correct, but only showed one 17mb excel file when i tried to browse the drive.

i shut down the computer, checked the ide and power connections, turned it back on, and could see all the files on the drive again. i tried to finish my copy and the same thing happened a second time. after 2 more subsequent reboots, checking all the connections, and trying a different ide cable, i haven't been able to get any of the files to show up again.

the computer recognizes what kind of drive it is, what size it is, and how much data is on the drive, but it can't show me the data itself.

is this drive salvageable? is there any way for me to retrieve the data short of paying through the nose for a data retrieval company?

[GX1_Man]

So it shows up in the BIOS correctly, and you can see what is there, but you just can't get it? Does it show it as RAW format? What did you use on it FAT32, several partitions, or one big NTFS drive? Is it an external USB drive or what?

[shadowsong]

i'm not at home so i can't answer all your questions, but here goes:

it's a normal internal hard drive, not an external drive. i know it's not partitioned, and i think it's NTFS formatted. i can see that the drive exists. i can see how much data is on the drive. if i browse to it in "my computer", instead of seeing the files and folders that are actually there, i see one excel file. i'll open the file when i get home.

i haven't checked it in the BIOS, but i'm pretty sure it's showing up correctly, since windows recognizes the drive.

does what show as RAW format, the data? how would i look for that?

sorry if my questions or responses don't make sense - apparently i know just enough about computers to be dangerous.

[GX1_Man]

You might try this:

http://www.dtidata.com/Products_ff_finder.asp

or look at this:

http://www.computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/61650.html

You may be able to save the data to your primary drive by booting with a Linux Live CD - Linspire or Knoppix I recommend, and both are free:

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/distro.php?distro=58

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/distro.php?distro=5

Just locate the folders and copy. The Linspire will be easier if you have never used Linux, but both are good. Remember that they run a bit slowly because they are running from the CD, no data is being written to your hard drive.

[shadowsong]

i know i have a knoppix cd and 2 cdrom drives, so i can try that method. however, i'm not sure it would work.

most of the information i read about using knoppix to recover files is aimed at people whose operating system was hosed by the hard drive crash (and thus who can't do anything with their computers), but my OS still works fine.

would knoppix be able to find those files even though windows is operational and can see the drive (but not the files)?

[GX1_Man]

You may be surprised what Linux can do. Worth a shot,don't you think? All it costs you is a reboot.

[shadowsong]

heh, and on this reboot i won't even have to pull out and reconnect all the cables! i'll give it a try.

[GX1_Man]

Be sure and let us know what you find.

[shadowsong]

well, i didn't find much. when i ran knoppix, the drive showed up (hdb1), but when i browsed to it, it was completely empty. when i tried to ls the contents in konqueror, i got an input/output error.

next step is probably pulling out the new ram to see if i can get to the hard drive with the original configuration.

[GX1_Man]

Was that drive formatted NTFS - the improved Microsoft file system?

[shadowsong]

yes, it was ntfs formatted.