Storage forum: Oops, I accidentally unplugged my USB hard drive, now I can't access it.

There are lots of programs out there designed to recover lost data. Here is a free one: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html There are also pay versions of different titles. Hopefully you'll be able to restore the data. Another option might be to get Acronis (www.acronis.com) and make a complete image of the affected hard drive and then from there you might be able to mount that image file as a virtual drive with the Acronis software and recover the files that way. I think there are also programs that can repair the file system of the drive and make it directly readable but I can't think of any titles of hand.

I realize this is kind of a late entry, but I just fixed my problem. I also used Easeus data recovery.

Problem: My 200 GB USB external drive became unreadable/unrecognizable by windows (XP SP 3) explorer. I used Easeus Partition Master 6.0.1 HE (completely freeware) to reassign a drive letter to the lost partition. When I did this the drive was instantly usable again! but of course it said that the drive us empty. I figured that becuase the process was so quick, little change was actually done to the data on the drive. Therefore my hopes were high for recovering information.

I then used Easeus Data Recovery Wizard (I think I got it from GOTD but there are other compareables out there I'm sure). The scan took several hours, (I used the "thorough" option) but I was able to retrieve my most important lost (not initially deleted) files and so far my drive is still working.

Good luck.

I have found R-Tools to work as advertised. Since your system asks to format the drive, we assume that the drive is physically visible as such. The recovery work can be tedious.

See R-Tools at http://www.data-recovery-software.net/
My only connection with them is as a paying user.

R-Studio utilities recover files
Deleted without Recycle Bin, or when Recycle Bin has been emptied;
Removed by virus attack or power failure;
After the partition with the files was reformatted, even for different file system;
When the partition structure on a hard disk was changed or damaged. In this case, R-Studio utilities can scan the hard disk trying to find previously existing partitions and recover files from found partitions.
From hard disk with bad sectors. R-Studio Data Recovery Software can first copy the entire disk or its part into an image file and then process the image file. This is especially useful when new bad sectors are constantly appearing on the hard disk and remaining information must be immediately saved.

Don't format the drive, don't even try to save anything to it.

Download a copy of GRC's hard drive data recovery software Spinrte http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm. Plug in your drive and run it on the volume. It will attempt to restore any damage you've done to your drive.

I too have used SpinRite v6 in the past. My experience was that it could access the hard disks on my Windows ME system (FAT32 partitions, on two 80GB hard disks), although it couldn't fix them; but it was not able to access a USB disk at all.

I'm a home user and I use what people call an overcomplicated system, but it is one system that has saved my butt many times. I use the Thermaltake Dock that allows Internal SATA drives to be plugged into it as one of the components. I then I have 2 extra drives of the SAME EXACT size of the drive to be backed up.

Once a week, I use Acronis 2010 to CLONE the disk onto one of the backup disc's that I plug into the Thermaltake dock. The most recent gets put into a fire proofsafe, the one that is in the safe gets moved offsite into my Safety deposit box at the bank.

Some call this overkill, but I have had a drive die on me, and instead of going out and buying a new drive and attempting to restore from a backup file that can get corrupted, I just open my case and replace the disc that crashed or could not be fixed with one of the cloned disc's and restart.

The total time to do this is about 5 minutes minus the changes that have occured in those 3 days.

I had to use this once and it was great.....

I was able to run software over the failed drive and found that one of my programming attempts to write to direct memory caused me to write to the NTFS block and corrupt the data, but the drive is healthy and is now in the backup rotation.

I have considered a 3rd drive that gets prepped every month by cloning it, booting off of it and running sysprep, incase the hardware changes enough that it Windows needs to reconfigure itself.

Backups are important.... The time it can take to start from scratch and install the software you had can take many hours let alone the lost work you had.

I also use Acronis's Online Backup which stores up to x number of versions of documents and files on the computer. Its just another layer of protection so that if something happens, i know I can have the latest documents down to the hour on my machine in minutes....

Overall my recovery time from a complete HD crash would be a max of about 10 minutes.....

Ask yourself, what would you do if your HD crashed???? How long to get back to where you are now EXACTLY???

When you look at the cost of the ThermalTake Device, and the price of internal HDD's, and you see that you can hot swap, it really makes a difference compared to using an enclosed disc where you are locked in to size.

Cheers, and good luck.

-Ryan

Not Smaller as you obviously cannot get a full copy of a 111gb hard drive onto a 80gb NO MATTER WHAT YOU TRY.

When this has happened to me in the past, I did a reboot with the USB port plugged in during the reboot, and walla it was there.

I know much less about this sort of thing than most of you, so this comment may be completely unhelpful.

BUT, I see that the other answers presume that data was erased from the hard drive. However, Brendan said that he quickly unplugged the connection to it, so I wonder whether the hard drive was really changed. Could it be that what he needs is simply to "convince" the relevant programs on his computer to forget the earlier instruction about reformatting the hard drive?

If so, how could he do this?

Geo2003 you have made a very good point about the different formatting methods.

However there is one other major problem with the above question.

As Brendan was trying to install Ubuntu linux on the drive it wouldn't have formatted the drive in a normal "windows format" way, even a full format can quite often be recovered if it is formatted normally.

But as Linux uses it's own file system it has most probably started formatting the drive as EXT2 or EXT3 file system, this is a totally different form of file system and will wipe out most of the recovery data which many recovery tools use. This is similar to using the Windows FDISK command and altering the partitions and is quite often irreversible.

There are some tools out there that can still recover data from this type of format, but normally they are very expensive and usually only used by things like police forces for recovering incriminating evidence.

That is a serious problem.

When you executed the command, it was faster then you pulling out the USB cable - so in my experience, you may have deleted the first sector of the drive that contains the directory and file structure of the hard drive - This is called the MFT, or Master File Table.

If my assumption is correct, you are going to need an application that can run outside of Windows with a bootable CD/DVD.
I bought Partition Commander 10.1 from Avanquest a few years back and never had the need for another application. This application lets you do what ever you want with internal and external drives, but it works outside of Windows because it allows you to create a boot CD/DVD - from there you have several options such as recovering the MFT, Partitioning the Drive, Reformat the Drive, etc.

Here is a description of what it can do:
Partition Commander - Safe, Easy, Reliable, Secure!

Separate and Protect Your Important Data!

Divide a single hard drive into two or more partitions
Copy, move, split and merge any partition without losing data
Step-by-step wizard guides you through partitioning process
Undo feature any partition step
Powerful safety features protect you against system failures while partitioning
Recover any delete partition ------ THIS IS THE ONE I AM REFERING TO.
Fix computer startup problems
Runs directly in Windows
Preview any partitioning tasks before completing it
Defragment any partition for optimal performance
Support USB drives
--------------------------------------------------

Now I am not telling that you should purchase it - There are several free programs at Cnet/Download - that can do the same as a paid version. Look for Disk Manager Utilities - Recover Deleted Partitions.

But keep in mind that the information you have on that drive is very valuable.

PLEASE REMEMBER - It is best if the application you use has an option to create a bootable CD/DVD so that non of the applications that run with Windows including but not limited to Antivirus programs, don't interfer with the recovery process.

I just remember, I tested Eauseus TODOBACKUP - I know you can create a bootable CD/DVD - but I can't remember if it has a utility built in the bootable CD/DVD to recover a hard drive the way Partition Commander does.

I am really sorry that this happen to you or anyone for that matter, don't give up, but do be careful, playing with utilities that WON'T do the job can further damage the hard drive.

Regards,
Geo

A similar incident occurred when I messed up a thumb drive that could not be recognized when plugged in. I used the free edition of Paragon Back Up and Recovery and was able to restore its use. CAUTION: I do not recall if it reformatted or not. You may want to attempt to recover the data on it first then once reformatted hopefully you can re-load it all. Of course check CNET for a copy of the program...I personally would be in the poor house without them.

I had this problem on a Vista machine. The system kept trying to format my drive when I tried to access it. The solution was to leave the drive plugged in, shut down the computer completely (normal shutdown), then reboot. On reboot, the system would detect the drive and give me normal access to the contents. On the machine I was using, this happened often, and the same, although tedious, solution would work each time. Give it a try.

I recently had a hard drive fail. The bearings or something like and the OS got corrupted and format failed. Bought new HD's and used a free recovery program with great success. I don't remember which one though. It was either Recover My Files or Recover Lost Data. I used both but don't remember which worked best.
Best Luck

Easeus.com has some good partition and recovery software. Some is freeware and some is low cost. I think that most of it is for various versions of Windows. You did mention that you tried accessing it on other OS's. They are really helpful. They also have a few forums, similar to this one, where they and other users contribute.
Between this group of smart cookies and theirs, almost any type of issue can be resolved. Good Luck.