Thread: External 160 GB hard disk problem

I have an external 160 GB hard disk (which connects to the PC via USB). I have been using it for the last year and I didn't have any problems with it. The file system of the hard disk is NTFS while my PC's file system is FAT32. A few days back while I was using it, Windows XP suddenly gave an error message 'System Volume Information corrupted, please run chkdsk'.

I was worried and so I restarted the system immediately. Now when I plug in the hard drive, it is detected by Windows (confirmed because the USB device detection sign appeared in the lower right hand corner). It also shows as a drive in 'My Computer'. But when I double click, it gives 'Disc not found error'. Also it does not run 'chkdsk'. When I checked the properties, the disk size and space reported are zero.

Also in the 'Computer Management' window, it shows as a drive but under the file system column where there should be "NTFS", it is blank. I am using Windows XP with Service Pack 2. I checked the drive on two other PCs with Windows XP, but got the same result. I have shown the drive to the hardware vendor from whom I had purchased it, and he told me either to format the disk (in which case I will lose all data) or to go for data recovery (which is very costly). Please advise me as to what may be the problem and how it can be rectified. As I said, you are my last resort otherwise I have to go ahead and format the disk. I have some very important data on it and I would prefer not losing any of it. Thank you.

Your drive has a problem either logically or physically. You will have to remove the drive from the case and physically install it on your desktop system. Download and use the program 'Raid2Raid' from Disklnternals and create an image of the entire drive on your C or D drive (make sure you have more than 160G B of space to create the image file). Once done, you can format the hard drive to find the fault with it. After the image is prepared and copied to the C or D drive, use the Raid2Raid program to mount the image as a drive and use any data recovery software to recover your data from the image.

You can use 'GetDataBack', 'Unerase' or 'RecoverMyFiles' to recover your data. If the drive has a physical problem (like the drive motor or data platter problems), then data recovery would be impossible without professional help. And if the data is really very important to you, you might have to spend some money to get it recovered professionally. Remember to take regular backups in the future.