Can't access files! Help.

IwantanewPC · 1 Sep 2006 at 01:51

Lately my pc had been randomly restarting so i did a system restore, this didnt help the problem and lead to it restarting during boot up. I gave in and reformated.

I used to have all my programs on my C drive then another drive (two seperate hard drives, not partitions) with movies, tv shows etc on. I had to format C to reinstall but now it says my other drive also needs formatting and doesnt recognize anything on it, infact its says its only 150gb big when it's actually 400.

Anyone got any idea how i can fix this? Cheers

(Drive E is external, ignore that)

Yewen · 1 Sep 2006 at 01:54

You got SP2 installed?

Pulse · 1 Sep 2006 at 01:55

if you go into control panel, Administrative tools, computer management, disc management what does it show it as in there?

IwantanewPC · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:00

Pulse · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:01

theres the problem all that unallocated space!

edit: do you have partion magic or Acronis disc director?

IwantanewPC · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:02

So what do I do... where are my files?

lol

edit: no i don't

Pulse · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:04

from what its saying every thing on D: has been wiped as absolutely no space is being used up.

you need to invest in some software to let you use the unallocated space, acronis is my choice of software

IwantanewPC · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:05

So basically my files are gone and unrecoverable?

Pulse · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:05

fraid so

anything important that you needed on there?

Massive Attack · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:15

have u got an exernal caddie you can use it i and try it over usb, it worked for me, other than that you could format the drive and use a tool which un deletes all your stuff dont ask me how to do it mind

Yewen · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:21

As long as you have not put any new files on the drive you can use a program to reconstruct most of them.

Werewolf · 1 Sep 2006 at 02:50

Yewen said:
As long as you have not put any new files on the drive you can use a program to reconstruct most of them.

But do not let the programme put the recovered files back on that drive (or part of the drive), as it will overwrite unrecovered data (it sounds obvious but i've seen people do that).

As has been said you can get some programmes that should in theory be able to recover the data, i used to have a couple of good free ones but lost them in a drive failure (the irony of it*) a year or so back and haven't found them again.

Once you've got the machine up and running again I would highly recommend running a drive test utility from the manufacturer to check the drive isn't mechanically unsound - however do this after you've recovered any files, as the test utility may hasten the end of a dying drive.

*I only lost a small amount of data (thanks to backups), but they were amoung it as I hadn't backed up my "drivers" folder for a while.

Homer-Simpson · 1 Sep 2006 at 08:45

Search for GetDataBack - it has not failed for me in the past

Ah here it is... (I think I can post this)

http://www.runtime.org/