Here's the deal, after defragmenting my 160gb disc i rebooted my computer and the hdd stoped responding. Now disc manager sais its unreadable.

Is there anyway i could extract data from it. I had 120gb data on it so you can see why format is not an option. Hell screw it all i just need X2 the threat save files.

sheesh this is just fuc*ing awesome.

humm.... if its as bad as I think it is....yes you might be able to recover the data...but you would have to mail it off to a data recovery company. And it will cost you a couple thousand dollars. So, the short answer would be no. Your screwed.

What type of hd is it?

Nm, I see you went cheap and got a Maxtor
http://forums.clankiller.com/viewtopic. ... 5&start=15

You might as well throw it away cause its probably going to happen again. Should have got a Seagate.

lol, Maxtor is not that bad. I avoid them now (I go western digital) but blah.

Kinda depends what happened to it. If the platters don't spin anymore, or it makes that 'clunk clunk clunk' of the head smacking against the side of the HD casing...yea....data recovery company or you're fuxored.

If, on the other hand, it spins up and appears to act normaly, just the data is inaccesible becase the FAT or something else got smeared, then it's possible for you to recover the data. There's software out there that'll do it. Actually, even if the heads are a-thunking there's software that might be able to salvage something or other.

In all my many 27 years of living, Maxtor and WD are the hd that have crashed the most on my or computers I have worked on. Seagate, very rarely crashed, and I do mean rarley. And since what ever I say is written in stone, it is the truth. Then end.

I had a string of bad luck with Maxtors...had 2 die in close proximity to one another. Prior to that, had an 800meg Maxtor that lasted 8 years. Go figure.

Seagate used to be a piece of shit back in the day...now I hear good things.

Western Digital...I've never heard anything bad about then, in fact, I've only heard good things. Never had one die on my yet.

IBM....the deskstar (aka the DeathStar) is the biggest piece of shit harddrive available today. Virtually guaranteed to fail in the first year. heheh.

No the hdd is working fine physically, its just that the filesystem(i think) is corrupt. Partitionmagic and logical disk manager both detect the hdd but display it as dynamic disc.

My primary hdd is also seagate, nvr had a problem with a seagate but at that moment they didnt have that big seagate hdd in store.

well, you can try running a software recovery tool on the bastard.

http://www.tucows.com/filerecovery95_default.html

looks like a good place to start. If anyone has specific tool recomendations, please post.

Hallelujah, i already saw my files, couldnt save them yet tho, the demo version of Magic Recovery can only save 10kb files which is no good, smallest i need start from 10meg. So gonne try something new today.

How can i do this:

Please change your device from DMA mode to PIO mode and remove all virtual drive software before you update firmware.

This is update for my cd rw.

assuming winxp/win2k:

right click my computer, properties, hardware tab, device manager button...

in device manager, find IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Figure out which channel your CDRW is on....if you can't figure it out, do this to both.

Double click on primary/secondary ide. Choose advanced settings. Set transfer mode to PIO only. Don't forget to change it back when you're done. DMA is faster.

Ok heres the deal, the 160gb disc turned into roughly 127gb disc, any idea how to fix it, i asked a friend he said bad sectors and according to him those cant be fixed.

I think hes right. I would send it back to Maxtor.

I know Seagate has this special program on their website that test your hard drive over the net. If the program says your hard drive is bad it automaticlly gives you an RMA number with insructions on sending it back.

Anyway i took it back to the shop i bought it from, they said they would test it and let me know. wish me luck that it is recoverable.

Just thought you might want to know how it ended, they gave me a new hdd. And since i dont need 400gb free space i gave it to my cousin.

Here's what my tip would have been:

Take it to the police and say that you suspect some one using the computer for illegal reasons, and that you think they trashed the hardrive, but you need the data on the disk, and so, are willing to hand it over for them to recover.

Free data recovery, and you can blaim someone else for all your child porn you dirty man