Any of you guys happen to have any data recovery software that I could use? I somehow managed to bork two of my drives and now they both show up as unformatted space in the disk manager in Windows. Both drives were 250gb drives with a single NTFS partition on each of them. boh.
Well I found this and am able to remount the partitions temporarily -- rebooting causes the partitions to not show up. http://findandmount.com/ However, I'm trying to copy over 250gb worth of data to other empty spaces and then will simply reformat the drive after the copy is complete (and then move it all back). *fingers crossed*
I've had a drive "fail" Turned out it was the board not the drive that failed. Swapped boards on the bottom of the drive with an identical drive and it worked just fine. Copied, moved, done. Glad you got something to work tho.
That's what I did the last time I somehow lost partition data. Except I imaged the drive and then restored the image after a reformat. Either way, it should work for ya.
Thanks for the input, guys. I got the problem fixed -- that find and mount program didn't completely work. It could somewhat restore the partition tables but would only virtually mount the drive. Since it was creating a temporary MBR for each drive, the data transfer off of the drives was PAINFULLY slow. Like 56k modem slow. I finally ran across a program that would actually physically rewrite the MBR and partition tables on both drives. It was called Testdisk. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk This saved me from losing 500gb of DVDs on my HTPC. whew!
Yeah. The funny thing is this whole thing stemmed from a blown capasitor on my motherboard and a broken SATA cable. lol.
YUP that will do it....i replaced over 10 maxtor drives in the old dell 260's because of those damn capasitor's i just LOVE it when it loops into the screen that basically says "windows doesn't know what the hell happen wanna reboot in safe mode?" Edit: soon it will be the end of hard drives altogether because flash memory is becoming more reliable so not only will it be nice and small (but hold large amounts) it will also be hot swappable
Define "soon". The limited number of read/write cycles in flash is still too low for long-term use. That is why they tell you to never defrag an SSD or format a USB drive in ntfs. Cost is also, as always, the most important factor. Flash-based hard drives are going to be waaaay more expensive relative to capacity for quite a while yet. Magnetic hard drives are getting more capacious and cheaper all the time as well. Faster too. It will be a while before flash catches up. And anything plugged into SATA is already capable of being hot-pluggable.
but you cant deny having solid state would be amazing with SanDisks new technology it could make flash memory 100% reliable and think about it for a second what ISNT expensive at first? if i remember the floppy that we all laugh at today was like expensive as hell back in the day..then disks replaced floppies etc things got cheaper as better technology came out yeah sure the price factor is nice and all and so is the more space..but flash memory is making leaps and bounds in terms of storage i give it about 5 years before we start seeing the first flash memory computers with NO hard drives i for one am interested in this.
Don't get me wrong, I love flash memory and am thoroughly interested in it's future. Portable magnetic media can suck it. Optical too, for that matter. I wouldn't call 5 years "soon". SSDs have tons of potential, and I look forward to their widespread use, but they're still in the infant stage.
yah i heard about it i just never bothered looking around...32 gigs isnt enough but ssd is like you said a baby and its quiet!