Check out the Dell Store on CNET
Storage: external hard drive no longer shows any data
external hard drive no longer shows any data
by lsvd128 - 8/14/06 3:08 PMI have been backing-up my system to a Western Digital External Hard Drive for about 6 months. Recently my desktop computer (Sony Vaio, Windows XP, pentium 4, 1 gig ram) internal hard drive failed - when I tried to boot, I got a message saying "missing operating system". Knowing I had everything backed-up to the external drive, I disconnected it and reformatted the internal hard drive. Now the external drive doesn't show any data on it. It shows a bunch of empty folders. It's an 80 gig drive which was 95% full when all this happened. Now it shows 3 gig used and 77 gig available. When I contacted Western Digital, they told me to contact the backup program company - pass the buck as usual. What could have happened to all the info on this drive and what can I do about it?
First thing. Make sure XP is fully updated.
by R. Proffitt
- 8/14/06 3:26 PM
In reply to: external hard drive no longer shows any data by lsvd128
XP before SP2 had USB 2.0 issues. But it's possible some worm or other had done it's damage since hard disks are not protected well enough to rely on for backup. I've written this numerous times here and posts like your continue to show up.
Read http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-7590-0.html?forumID=67&threadID=28919&messageID=328179 about how to scrape files off such drives.
That's not passing the buck. WD didn't write the software.
Bob
thanks
by lsvd128 - 8/17/06 12:20 PM In reply to: external hard drive no longer shows any data by lsvd128Bob - thanks for taking the time to answer my question, but I'm confused. i know the data was on the WD external drive because I was using the data directly from the drive. Now it's not there. How can that be a software problem? Clearly, this is beyond me.
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
