Data and formatting disappeared from 1 TB WD drive

[Robert P]

Have a 1 TB WD SATA drive that I use as an archive drive. After firing it up today XP recognizes it but now the data isn't showing and it shows up as unformatted. No "whirr click" like a dying drive, the data all just suddenly disappeared. I also notice that the computer activity light stays on constantly.

Is there a way to potentially fix this?

Thanks

 

[johnb35]

Sounds like you may have errors on that drive. Download and create a bootable diagnostic cd and then run the long test.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&sid=30&lang=en

Download the iso file and write the image to a cd. Don't just burn the file to a cd as it won't work. You must use software that works with ISO files.

 

[janrob]

Does it recognize the disk? If so, have you tried it on another computer? There is a high chance the sector 0 of the disk got corrupted and data may not be accessed by the operating system.

There is this software Active Undelete. You can recover all files to another disk with it. It saved my life a few times when I screwed up my hard disk. There is a demo version I think. You Google it and you will find it.