BertieBigBollox@gmail.com wrote:
> Weird. D: appears to be still there but when I click on it, it says
> drive is unformatted, do you want to format?
>
> Any ideas how to fix this? If I do choose to format, what are the
> chances of recovering files that were on there before format?
Well, formatting isn't going to be helping you, and can only
harm the data. So don't do that.
Use a data recovery program, to try to get your files back.
Make sure you have enough space, on some other hard drive, to
write the recovered files. Don't try to write the files
onto the existing, damaged drive. Data recovery programs
only do read operations on the damaged disk, and should be
doing any writes to space you're providing on another hard
drive.
If you want a freebie to try, this is supposed to rescue files
from NTFS. At least one other poster, managed to get files back
from an NTFS partition. Plug in a drive with some space on it
(like an external USB hard drive), so you'll have room to store
the files.
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/WoundedMoon/win32/driverescue19d.html
Once all your files are safe, you can worry about formatting,
reinstalling, or any other kinds of destructive operations.
While doing those things, make sure your new USB external drive,
has been "Safely Removed" and shut off. (Use the "Safely Remove" icon
in the tray, to flush the cache on the drive.) When you're ready, you can
move the files back, for any files important enough to keep.
With regard to tools such as chkdsk. Chkdsk is a "repair in place" tool
That means, it makes changes to the drive, which could either be a
positive or a negative thing. For example, repair programs can
actually make things worse, in the process of making repairs. That
is because they lack human judgment. For example, if a human saw
a certain pattern of damage, they might stop all repair work, concluding
there are mechanical or electrical problems. A program like chkdsk,
may do more harm than good. If your intention is to use "repair in place"
tools, then doing a sector by sector backup of the damaged drive is a
good idea. A sector by sector backup, doesn't need a working file system,
to do its job. I do these, using a port of "dd", or boot a Linux LiveCD
and use a copy of "dd" there, to copy the damaged disk.
With my approach, you can see why I might recommend the purchase of two
spare drives. One drive contains the sector by sector backup. The other
drive might hold any recovered files. It all depends on whether your
tools are "repair in place" type, or "scavengers". If the files are valuable
to you, then they're worth buying a couple spare drives. Once you own the
spare drives, they can also be used for regular backups.
Chkdsk can attempt to repair a partition. Normally, you feed it a drive
letter, and let it run. If you still have a working drive letter, that
might work. (Of course, on your next reboot, the drive letter could
disappear for good. So don't depend on that letter to stay there.)
Chkdsk can also take a pointer to a "raw partition", but you still need
an identifier to tell it what you want repaired. There are more details here.
They use "mountvol" to get the identifier.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457122.aspx
chkdsk \\?\Volume{2d9bd2a8-5df8-11d2-bdaa-000000000000}
In the data recovery business, never assume your difficult situation
is stable. For example, on the very next reboot, you could lose access
to the drive entirely. So your first priority, is to "not panic", and
prioritize the things you do next, in some kind of order. For example,
if you get the sector by sector backup to work, then even if the drive
suffers hardware failure, your data is not lost. It will be much cheaper,
to take your sector by sector backup to a local IT specialist and have
the data restored, than it would be to have to send a broken drive
to a place that recovers data from dead drives. (It is easy to copy
the sector by sector backup, to another drive, but whatever is wrong
with the file system in there, still would need to be fixed.)
To give an example, one night, I had something strange happen to a drive.
(Could hear "clicking and whirring", from the drive doing restarts.)
But I was tired and decided to shut off the computer and worry about it
the next day. When I turned on the computer the next day, the drive and
the data were gone for good. If I'd put the effort into it, at that
point in time, I might have been able to keep the data.
HTH,
Paul
7 -0700 (PDT), "BertieBigBollox@gmail.com"