Need help with hard drive

[t0asty]

So... I was having one of those days yesterday and to top it off I am in the middle of moving things into my new apartment, one of those things being my htpc. I came back out to the SUV to grab another box to see the htpc had fallen from the car onto the cement. Lots of scratches that can be hidden, broken fan that can be replaced, but of course that can't that simple. Windows from the ssd took a minute initially to boot, but now it appears to be fine, however, one of the three other data drives lost it's assigned drive letters. I changed it back, but it's saying there is no data on there (last time I checked, there was 30gb of 1tb left). Disk Management sees it as RAW as well rather than NTFS (but a healthy primary partition). Never dealt with anything like this before and only having internet on the phone till Friday makes this more frustrating. Anything I should try to attempt to restore my lost por... uh, movies? Or am I SOL and have to reformat? Thanks ahead of time!

[l1il]

There is two things I can think on top of my head.

 

Have you been in the BIOS and taken a look at the HDD size/specs there?

Is the drive functional enough for you to do a Checkdisk on it?

 

I must say, Windows having lost the TOC is bad news

 

Your undetermined digital content might have corroded the drive and all it needed to pass away was a knock.

 

In other thoughts, good luck

 

Edit : writing under fatigue

Edited October 2, 2013 by StefenHeif

[EuroFight]

With mechanical drives, unfortunately physical bumps can be all that's needed to corrupt the data or even damage the drive itself.

 

But seriously, 1TB of porn, thats quite impressive

[Waco]

You could try data recovery tools on it but I wouldn't use the drive past that.

[t0asty]

haha no, it has over 100 (non-porn) movies on it and about 15 complete tv series.  Looks like I'll be hitting my comcast limit early this month.  I did a little more digging around and read up on some data recovery software that should work that I can copy over to my new 2tb drive.  Fingers crossed I can get most of it back.  Just glad the computer itself works...

[t0asty]

so I finally was able to finish moving and get the internet connect in order to download some programs.  cchalogamer helped me with File Scavenger.  I noticed with the one HD connected at boot, the system would hang because it apparently locks up the sata bus.  I tried connecting it after windows booted and it will see the drive for a minute, but when I go to run the File Scavenger or any other program, they all freeze and the HD is lost in windows again.  Any other ideas before I just chalk this one up as a loss?

[capthowdy575]

I take it you have open the case up and check all the connections also have you tried spin rite?

[t0asty]

I take it you have open the case up and check all the connections also have you tried spin rite?

 

I have tried connecting it to both my desktop pc and in the htpc.  Causes both computers to hang on boot.  BIOS sees the HD, but that's about it.  Unfamiliar with Spin right... care to explain?

[capthowdy575]

spin rite is just another recovery program just because one doesn't mean they all wont work. you need to make a boot disk to use it though instead of booting into windows you'll boot into spin rite and choose the options there. I've only had to use it once or twice but its work every time for me when windows wouldn't see it.