I have been using 2 WD drives for some time now. (one for my operating system and some storage, and the second for storage). This setup has worked fine for years. Recently, I have noticed that my secondary drive has been renamed. When I click on it, the system does not show any of my previous data on that drive and brings up a message saying that this drive has not been formatted, and asks if I would like to format the drive. If this drive contained unimportant information, I wouldn’t even bother. But this drive contains very important docs, including my resume. As someone who has recently become unemployed, this is a big issue.
My initial thought was that this drive some how got reformatted. Only, I am the only one that uses this computer, and don’t think that I would ever reformatting the drive. Even by mistake. However, I started looking around on the internet to see about “DIY” data recovery. I downloaded “iCare Data Recovery and Recuva” (of which only the later was recommended). Instructions for the software instructed to add the drive in question to a different maching. I assumed this was because they were assuming that the drive you needed to work on was your main drive with your operating system; which would mean that your system wouldn’t boot up. being that this was my secondary drive, I installed the software on my system. With out really doing anything accept for opening the software and allowing it to serch for drives, my secondary drive was recognized by this software. Of course, I was happy to see this. in the meantime, I also did a Windows Update just in case I was in need of one (which I was). I didn’t blame the following on the software I installed at the time, but shortly afterward while rebooting, my system would not fully reboot. During a reboot, my system would go through all the motions to the point of bringing up my desktop wallpaper. Unfortunately, it would go no further. No start bar or icons would come up. Just my wallpaper. You could do nothing but move the mouse around aimlessly. If I remove the secondary drive from my system, the system will boot normally.
I’m not sure if I really want to hear the answer to the question… but is this drive Toasted? I have tried replacing the IDE connection cables, messing with Jumpers… Nothing. The system has been acting a bit weird lately anyway. I was actually thinking of reformatting my MAIN drive. Do you think this would help? Please share any thoughts.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Just to give you some info, I am running Windows XP
