Please can I have just some clarification?

Alright as you folks know… I’ve been fairly vocal about the issue I’ve been having with my hard drive…

However, after many suggestions and a thourough search of this forum I’ve seemingly have found a laudry list of solutions, however, there’s just one more bridge to cross before I can finally say that I’ve recovered my data and or that I can say screw it, and just accept that I’ve lost EVERYTHING and move on and try to rebuild…

That information is this:

Why would my computer take the assigned letter that I have for my External Hard Drive, in this case the (G) drive, and seemingly reassign the drive…

it appears that my computer has taken my G drive and re-assigned it the F drive  out of the blue, and seemingly with that change has taken all my data and disappeared with it.

is there a way I could reverse the drive change?

with this situation going on is there a way I could even hope that I could recover the lost data?

I am currently using Recuva and attempting to scan that F drive I had mentioned in HOPES to find the 800GB of data that once was on it, however while selecting the F drive to scan Recuva tells me that, that path DOES NOT EXIST…

Okay…

what the **bleep**???

Can someone - anyone, man, woman, child —**bleep** MUPPETT

please give me some clairity on what’s going down here?

just fill me in on the mystery - - let meknow that SOMEONE SOMEWHERE has experienced something like this before!!

Try going into folder options and check show hidden files. You can also try booting from a Linux Live CD and see if you can access the data.

Joe

I’ve done some screwing around and it says in a partition recovery program, in the properties for a drive that’s entitled:

WD 10 EAVS External, it says It’s Not Initialized then in red “MBR needs to be fixed”

so If I fix that master boot - would I stand to Lose all that’s on the External???

quick update, I did a WD Data LifeGuard test and this came up as a result:

Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WD 10EAVS External
Unit Serial Number: ¹ ²Y^J¸¤Ì
Firmware Number: 1.65
Capacity: 18446744073707484.00 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 06-Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete! Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97 (Unknown Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 2!
Test Time:

09:49:51, June 10, 2012


Try this .

Go to

Control Panel/Administrative Tools

Click Computer Management

Maximize the screen and if you can , take a screen shot and post it on here. If you can’t take a screen shot post in detail what it says.

Status 7 is a read element error

The manual for the Diagnostic Tool is   here. Just know that there is a repair feature in the extended test but it will have to write to the drive and destroy data you have. Try to provide the screen shot before any type of repair is attempted. I will be around .

er,

I’ve got windows 7

I don’t seem to have the computer management button (??)

Mr_Puntuality, it’s telling me that my message cannot exceed 20,000 characters.

what am I looking for in the computer management?

EDIT:

So I was curious about what an ERROR 7 was and googled it.

So seeing how this means that my hard drive is about to fail out on me thus SERIOUSLY, taking everything with it when it goes… it appears that there is some sort of way of getting my data backed up and off the HD before the thing takes a header…

How do I do this?

The following is a screenshot of  my  Disk  Management screen. It shows all the drives on my computer and  their status. 

The gray part at the bottom with the blue bar across the top shows my drive with each partion and its state of health or status. Clicking inside one of those and right clicking brings up  a pop up menu.

The options available in the menu are open, change drive letter,explore,mark partition as active,shrink the partition, delete the partition, properties,and help. As you can see , you have quite a bit of control over your drives from this screen.

I’m not sure how you access the adminstrative tools on all versions of Windows 7 but there should be a similar tool I would think on other versions…

I run Windows 7 Ultimate and to access my computer management console  I go to …

Start/Control Panel/System and Security/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management.

Clicking  on Disk Management will bring up a scrren like the picture I posted below. This will tell you the status of  all of your drives and partitions. It will also let you partition,format partitions or drives and do other disk maintence tasks.

Take a screen shot (picture) of your Disk Management screen and insert it into your post if you can. As for your drive letter changing that would happen if the C:/ drive was formatted. The C:/ drive has a logical D:/partition . Windows uses the D:/ partition as a recovery partition.Was your hard drive C:/ formatted recently ? Many often mistakenly format the C:/ drive and wipe out the D:/ partition along with it,  thinking they will gain another 10 gb that this partition takes.

Here is another screen shot with the console tree and action panels hidden giving a larger view. I also hooked up my WD Passport as can be seen . The top of the screen is  called the Volume List view and the bottom is a graphical view . They are both just showing the same thing only in a different view.

That Status Error 7 is going to prevent you from doing anything until it can be traced down. Pull up your Disk Management tool and post a pic or information. 

Has the internal drive on the laptop been formatted lately. Is the recovery partition D:/ showing up on the C:/ drive ?

Have you had any serious Window errors and or system crashes where you had to boot up into safe mode ?

Have you had to do a reinstall of the OS on this laptop ?

Nothing has been formated. I bought this laptop spanking new in December.

since I bought it though, when the external was working, my computer kept asking me to format the external hard drive… I never did, fearing that it would erase all that I had on the hard drive…

I’ve had  a few small crashes…  I plugged in my external hard drive before I turned on the Laptop and in start up the computer crashed as a result. So I’ve been conctious to keep the hard drive unplugged from the computer to prevent a crash.

the only other odd thing I’ve notice - and this is of late since the whole problem with the hard drive - is that if my hard drive is plugged into my comptuer, sometimes my windows explorer doesn’t work properly, or if I go to shut down with the hard drive plugged in it would cause my computer to take decades to shut down and or log off.

No, I haven’t had to do any reinstalls of the OS on my computer… after I noticed the issue with my external hard drive, I did assume that perhaps I just need to restore my computer to an earlier state, so I rolled it back to a week before when my external hard drive was working… (this did nothing though, obviously).

as for the screen shots, the screen shots you’ve posted are not showing… and the screen shots I’ve tried to post - this forum isn’t allowing me to post as it’ s (apparently) over 20,000 characters…

From everything you have said I would assume your WD is not ,or has not been initialized. As for you not being able to see the screen shots I posted , Click on the Rich Text tab, it will prompt you if you need Java. You also might have to check your browser settings to see if you have Java allowed to run.  I had no problem posting the screenshots using the Insert/edit image icon and I see both of the screenshots perfectly . You can do it if you use Rich Text (one of the three tabs at the top of the posting box.) The choices are Rich Text, HTML, and Preview. You need to have Java installed. It should tell you if you need to install Java  or not and should install it automatically if you click yes to install Java.

I don’t think your WD is going to show up or be accessible if you restored your PC to an earlier time before you installed the WD drive. I don’t want to give you advice that is going to cause you to lose data so I won’t . But it sounds to me like you need to create a backup plan, count your losses and move on. Read the WD manual, reinstall it. Do you use the Smartware software ? 

One other thing. I always have to unplug My Book power from the back of the My Book when I am booting or the computer freezes . Same problem you have. Just unplug it until the Windows Logo appears and then you can plug it in. Under no circumstances should you unplug the My Book if it is in an activity state. Activity state is when the blue light is flashing steadiily. If you ever have you may have corrupted the My Book drive and will have to format it.

thanks…

I’ve been considering a backup plan… one where I just cut my losses and just move on… however the only thing that stops me in my tracks is the little tick in the back of my mind that reminds me that there are things on there that are WORTH loosing (for my stupidity, of not backing up) and there are things that are NOT WORTH loosing due to my lack of education.

If I could just figure out a way (without spending a jillion dollars) to sneak into the drive and just extract those 8 gigs of data then I’d be fine burning the drive and starting a-new… At this point I feel like there is a million dollars in a suit case and the locks are busted but I don’t have the jillion dollars to bring to a lock smith…

I’d be more than greatful if you’ve got any further advice, you’ve been beyond helpful and helpful than anyone else on this board and anyother boards for that matter… so thank you thank you thank you!!

I suggest that you take the drive into a computer shop and see if they can recover the data from it if that data is that important to you.It shouldn’t be an expensive thing to do.

Then I would take some time and develope a BACK-UP strategy.

By back-up, I mean having that data stored in several places in case one of the storage mediums becomes corrupted and inaccessable.

That is what I mean by a back-up plan. 

You should have it backed up on several types of media. Floppies(CDs/DVDs, as well as hard-disk .

I think Windows 7 as well as Vista have pretty good built-in shadow back-ups of the operating system.

Nevertheless I would familarize yourself with and have a plan in case your computer becomes unbootable.

I just got done  using the Windows Backup utility and  doing a full  system back-up  of my desktop. That utility backs up your files where you specify and then creates a bootable floppy to boot your system and restore those files. 

The back-up files  (200 gigs) are on my external drive  and my bootable floppy disc I store away from all my other discs with the original Windows XP operating system CD. They are both kept together in a specific place where I can find them in an emergency.

Doing a backup with the Windows utility also automatically creates a restore point . Its a good idea to  create a restore point before making any significant changes to registry , system files, or hardware changes.  This gives you a place to jump back to in case of some kind of unrecoverable error or system hang.

I  don’t want to sound preachy but you seem to stray off point when I was asking you for some specifics. Its difficult to help someone when they ignor your requests for information. Anyway, sorry I couldn’t be of more help.

Good Luck