External Hard Drive help

[Tomec]

I have a 500GB external HD I use for transfering files between computers at home and school. This consists of a standard 2.5" HDD I had (from another external drive where the enclosure didn't work) and threw into a new enclosure I bought. Everything was fine for the last few months, but then all of a sudden it stopped working. I didn't unplug it without ejecting it, the power didn't go off, there wasn't (far as I know) a surge. It's working, I go take a break and eat, come back and it's not.

I restart the computer and now it keeps saying I have to format the disc before I can use it. Even better, although the drive is visible to the OS, it doesn't have the whole "your drive is x% full" or "100 of 200 GB" used or anything like that.

Now I'm pretty sure I have everything from it backed up elsewhere so I wont lose anything if I do have to format it. But I'm hoping that maybe someone has some ideas on how to get around that or get the data off it before I do.

[chazus]

Assuming the drive isn't actually failing, and it's just a corrupt partition, it could be recovered from a number of tools. I'd try Recuva first, it's fast and free.

[Electromatt]

I'd stick the bare drive in a desktop and see if it shows up with the data, could be the enclosure.

[Tomec]

Well I stuck it in normally and I still had the same thing with it showing as blank and saying please format me type thing. I've downloaded that program and I think I have another recovery program too. But I haven't ran one yet or done a reformat. Hoping that maybe someone else will have another option or something will just magically click into place rofl

[lokii]

Well sounds like your drive bit the big one. If the computer cannot even recognize it it is probably dead.

[fatalwario]

I have a 500GB external HD I use for transfering files between computers at home and school. This consists of a standard 2.5" HDD I had (from another external drive where the enclosure didn't work) and threw into a new enclosure I bought. Everything was fine for the last few months, but then all of a sudden it stopped working. I didn't unplug it without ejecting it, the power didn't go off, there wasn't (far as I know) a surge. It's working, I go take a break and eat, come back and it's not.

I restart the computer and now it keeps saying I have to format the disc before I can use it. Even better, although the drive is visible to the OS, it doesn't have the whole "your drive is x% full" or "100 of 200 GB" used or anything like that.

Now I'm pretty sure I have everything from it backed up elsewhere so I wont lose anything if I do have to format it. But I'm hoping that maybe someone has some ideas on how to get around that or get the data off it before I do.

GetDataBack can fix it & read files, had the same thing happen

[chazus]

Its one of three things

1) The partition header is damaged, which is repairable sometimes, and data is recoverable
2) The partition is corrupt, and needs to be formatted, and data MIGHT be recoverable/rescused
3) The drive is physically damaged, and data recovery is a tossup at that point.

Run data recovery first. No sense in waiting on that.