HARD DRIVE WIPED - Please Help :-(

[Skinno]

Just found this site. Can someone please help. I'm not that technically adept, when it comes to PC's but manage to get by ok, however, a few months ago everything was working fine with my 'D Drive', I went to bed, then switched on my PC the next day and my entire 80 gig Hard Drive (which was FULL to 76 gig with ALL my music) had disappeared. I am gutted. I tried looking in it, but it says the file system is now RAW (whatever that is) instead of NTFS. I had literally just bought 100 blank disks the day before to transfer everything. I rang a local PC shop and they said they could repair this for me but it would cost about £180, which I can't afford. I'm sickened. Is there ANYTHING at all I can do to rectify this situation? Anyone? PLEASE help.
Thanks: Skinno xxx
P.S: If I win the Lottery, I promise to take whoever can solve this problem on any holiday of their choice- LOL  

[GX1_Man]

The RAW message is not a good one. WHat kind of drive is it? YOu can download free diagnostics from the manufacturer's web site to see if it has departed this world. Any warranty left? Many drives have a 3 year warranty and Seagate has a 5 yr. on many of their drives?

A replacement is the next best thing. The music can be reburned, but as you see, hard drives are not the place for backups. They all die sometime.  

[Skinno]

GX1, Thanks for the reply. Not sure about the warranty, it was a gift from a friend. Much of the music can't be replaced, thats why I'm unhappy. A lot of it was music recorded in studio's - band demo's and the tracks were the only copies in existence, so they are totally irreplacable I'm afraid  

[GX1_Man]

If that is the case, you can try a data recovery service, but they are expen$ive! That's your best bet however.

[Skinno]

 
Thanks GX for the replies, appreciated.
Anyone else any ideas also??

[IT-Guy]

Do you have a second drive to slave from?  If so not only can you try to retrieve the data by slaving it.. but you can also use data recovery tools for much cheaper.  I found http://Http://ptdd.com works pretty well, but requires another hard drive.  what did you do to get that RAW message?

[GX1_Man]

Once you start trying to retrieve it or even use it there is a great chance that you will make matters worse. Some like the "put it in the freezer for 30 minutes" idea, but if this data is that important, you need to get professional service or advice.  

[Michael]

Skinno, if the data is so important to you, you have to go for the pro and pay the price.

As GX1_Man suggested, harddisk is not really a good media to store important data, nor a CD/DVD.
I myself always have three copies of my data - one in my current HDD, one in backup HDD, one on DVD.