I am having a bunch of "Fun" with my 500GB external HD. Several things have happened in the last couple of weeks: 1.The folders changed To cmd shortcuts. (I could type in the folder name after the drive letter without .cmd and it would open the folder with all things intact.) (I posted the problem here and was told that I have a virus. I ran my AV and nothing, as I expected.) 2.I lost the whole drive. When I clicked on the icon for the HD, it came up and told me to format. Well, I knew not to do this. So I ran chkdsk repair and got about HALF of the stuff back. 3.Lost whole drive again! Tried chkdsk and it told me that it would not work with a raw drive. I have tried several disk recovery programs and they do a mediocre job. Mostly GETTING back some avi's without names with them. My biggest question is this: Would it be helpful to pull the drive out of the external case and run it straight to the MB? I have some pretty important ISO file and would love to get them back. Also, what would be the best recovery program out there and is there any way to get just the list of files back if all is gone? It is rather unlikely that removing the HDD from it's case is going to change your problem. It was functioning in the case initially i presume. A more conclusive test would be to run the HDD on another computer and compare the results. By the way while installed AV software can go a long way toward prevention/detection/cure they are NOT infallible and nasties can still be resident on the computer. Which is why if the possibility of infection exists the CH forum devoted to that is much more comprehensive. It will take time and patience if you do go to that forum. You could try this:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva
good LUCK,truenorth
I tried running Linux from the CD on the same machine. The HD showed up as non formatted. Would a completely different machine be any different maybe running XP?I agree with TrueNorth, normally removing the drive from the enclosure and mounting it inside a system won't do much. However I'm thinking there might be a problem with the power supply for the enclosure, if that is the case then removing the drive from the enclosure may get it to work properly.I tried it with Ubuntu on the same machine. I got the same results. Would trying it on a completely different machine help?So you have already removed it from the enclosure and tested it as an INTERNAL drive?
Did you double check the jumper settings when you tried it as an internal drive?No, I just tried running Ubuntu from the CD. I then tried to access the drive.Anyone?