Hai all! hope to get some advice here.
i hv an external HDD connected using USB. recently i use kazaa to download stuffs into the HDD.
Before this the HDD already have plenty of data inside.
While downloading, the HDD suddenly stop responding.
my pc still can see the usb device but i cant go in the HDD.
the pc already treat the HDD as if it is a RAW unformatted new harddisk and ask me whether i wanna format it.
I am very upset becoz all my data was inside and i didnt backup those.
my friend said my data is still inside and said it is the file allocation table(FAT) error on the disk. i am not sure about this...is it true?
Does anybody know how can i retrieve back my data?
really hope to get some help here..thankz in advanced.!!

What make is the HDD? Some manufacturers like seagate and Westerndigital have disk diagnostic programs that will identify and fix HDD's. I'm not sure if there's a different procedure with external USB drives though so you'll just have to test it out.

Have a look at these freeware programs and see if they will help: pc insepector file recovery and testdisk

If everything fails and you just want the HDD to work then have a look at this procedure Debug Routine to Clear the Master Boot Record

Lets try the less aggressive step first though eh
;-)

JR

Have you tried running "chkdsk /r" from the DOS prompt on the USB drive's letter? There's manys a time this has repaired bad NTFS partition. However do you know if the drive is formatted in NTFS or FAT? See if scandisk can do anything first

GF