Will I ever have my data back?

[Caple]

Well, yesterday my HD died. It's a Seagate SATA 250gb. I turned the computer on and the HD is not accessible on Windows Explorer (it says I need to format) and on Disk Management it says the disk is unaccessible. From the help file it seams like the problem is hardware, like the headers or something.
How could I save my data back? Buying a new HD from the same model and exchanging plates would be my only option?
Did any of you have this problem?
I can't believe I lost more than 220gb that were usefull for me.

Bruno

[Cobra]

Bruno,

Firstly, I run two of those hard drives in my PC and they contain lots of important information...

Possible solution:

http://www.seagate.com/support/index.html

Try SeaTools - it's diagnostic software, and might be able to tell you what's up with the drive and perhaps even rescue it.

I don't know enough about this sort of thing to really help you, I'm afraid. If you could post up the result of a full diagnostic using SeaTools, it might help though.

Good luck!

Cobra

[Caple]

Man, can you believe I forgot the check Seagate's site to look for help? I'll do it as soon as I get home (in about 3 hours). I'll try both "online" and "desktop" SeaTools options.
Thanx for the tip

[Xylob the Destroyer]

use FileScavenger!!
i had the same situation -- Windows said the drive needed to be formatted even though I had a great deal of data on there. Disk Manager said it was unaccessable.

FileScavenger saw it just fine and extracted almost all of my files from the drive.
definitely worth the small price of the program

[ozymango]

use FileScavenger!!
i had the same situation -- Windows said the drive needed to be formatted even though I had a great deal of data on there. Disk Manager said it was unaccessable.

FileScavenger saw it just fine and extracted almost all of my files from the drive.
definitely worth the small price of the program

I'll second this! And I know there's freeware out there that claims to do the same (haven't tried myself so I can't tell) but I can guarantee that file scavenger can pretty much work miracles. It does cost, I think it's $40, and it's not fast, but it does work.

This assume that your hard drive motor is spinning and the BIOS can recognize the drive, anyway -- an absolute hardware failure of the drive is difficult to recover without physically tearing the drive apart and paying $$$$$ to get a data recovery service to extract it. But if the drive at least spins, if it at least shows up in the BIOS, even if Windows can't see it, file scavenger can.

Caveat: Take that drive out of the computer NOW and don't touch it until you're ready to restore. Put it in a safe place and LEAVE IT ALONE until you get the software, have installed the "dead" drive as a secondary drive, and then go. Because you may or may not have much life left in this drive and you don't want to find out the hard way that it was good for three more hours and that was it.

[Caple]

Sorry, I couldn't reply on the weekend.
Thanx Xylob and ozymango! File Scavenger found everything on the hard drive! I remember reading about this software somewhere a long time ago, but I would not remember it.
Now I just need tosave some money and buy a new HD. I won't keep using the drive even if I recover everything.
Thanx a lot!