PLEASE HELP: External HD Power Supply was Kicked.

jra64

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Dec 19, 2008
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First of all thank you for viewing this topic as the data on this hard drive is extremely sentimental.

Some of my greatest memories (such as my wedding), are on this hard drive, so I appreciate ANY help you can give me.

I have a 1.5 TB Seagate Expansion External Drive ST315005EXA101-RK, yesterday my foot decided to accidentally kick the power supply and a noticed a few minutes later windows was giving me the following error message:

"Windows was unable to save all the data for the file F:\$MFT. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection."

At first I didn't think much of it. I viewed the drive and all the contents were shown but no videos were playing. I thought it was a codec issue at first because I just recently nuked my computer. Most files don't open on the drive. The thumbnails for the pictures were still showing, some pictures I could still open, some text files were intact. Later on I made a small text file, wrote something in it, and saved it to the drive to see if I could still write, and it saved properly. I have never restarted my computer as I've read it may not allow me to see the drive anymore. I tried copying the files but windows gives me the "Cannot read from source file or disk." error. After a little while I opened up some pictures (possibly not the same ones) and only 20% of the picture I opened would be showing, the rest greyed out. After I went to sleep the thumbnails don't work.




SHORT VERSION and WHAT I'VE DONE:

Running XP

Kicked external power supply (1.5 TB Seagate Expansion External Drive ST315005EXA101-RK)
Error: "Windows was unable to save all the data for the file F:\$mft"
Can still see filenames on hard drive.
Cannot open most files, even text files.
Some files do open.
Pictures displaying only 20%
Can create and save a txt file.
Slept
Picture thumbnails gone.
Pictures don't work.

Actions Taken:

PC Inspector doesn't detect my F Drive
Recuva Detects the Drive but says "The process cannot open the file because another process has locked a portion of the file."
Panda Recovery DOES detect my drive but has the error message "failed to open selected disk drive"



Questions:

I read that enabling disk cache may cause this problem. But I believe this is different as I kicked the power supply. Do I risk losing any information by turning this off to see if that works?

If anybody has ANY idea on what I can do PLEASE post.

CPU:

XP Home 2002
Service Pack 2
Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 3.33GHz
2.50 GB of RAM
 

steadfast1984

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Jan 3, 2010
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That happens if there is an interruption to the power supply. everything should be OK once you turn off your computer plug everything back in and turn it on again. you would get the same error code if you unplugged the HDD or knocked out the UBS (or esata if thats what your using) Cord out. I know this because the same thing happened to me, even got the same HDD but mines a 500GB. good luck. and if you can install your external internally and slave it to your boot disk. less risky that way.
 

steadfast1984

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if that doesn't work try plugging her into someone elses computer... because the same thing also happened later with me, it messed up the USB interface and wouldn't even recognize the drive, but im running the same drive unaltered in my brand new computer with no problems.
 

jra64

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Dec 19, 2008
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THANK YOU for your post! I am afraid however if I restart that I can no longer even see the filenames on the drive. Does anyone know any program to save all the filenames because even the dates of some of these events are important.

EDIT: Also, do I risk anything by NOT restarting the computer? The hard drive has begun to click a little bit sometimes and like I said pictures are now no longer viewable.

Should I restart? Does it make sense that if I don't restart it could harm the drive or no?
 

steadfast1984

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Jan 3, 2010
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you cant do much BUT restart it. i wouldn't run that hard drive in an ERROR any longer then you can help it. just restart it it cant get worse then it is. like if you cant access the files as it is. then thats it. the best thing to do is turn everything off and restart everything ..
 

jra64

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Dec 19, 2008
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My cpu is installing updates 4 of 9, do you have AIM? It seems your online right now and it would probably be faster to be on AIM. I understand it's not your responsibility to help me with this, but would you mind adding me on AIM if you have it? My aim handle RyanJRA64Abella. Feel free to message me if anyone has any suggestions.
 

jra64

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Dec 19, 2008
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No luck yet, sorry for the late response. My recovery programs can now see the drives though, so we will see if they can do anything. I will probably send it to Office Depot as I bought the protection plan there and I believe that includes data recovery. Thanks for your help though!