I think i killed vista...

[AKA_RA]

So i was swapping HDDs because San Andreas wasn't wanting to work with Vista, so i disconnected my SATA Vista drive and hooked up a regular ol' IDE. I installed XP on the IDE drive just fine, installed San Andreas, etc. But the other day I went to switch it back after about a week of not using the Vista drive, and to my horror, I found the drive to be unformatted. I have a bunch of crap on there that is replaceable, so if I can't get it back, thats fine. Either way, I can't figure out what happened, nor have i figured out how to fix it without first having to purchase software(I can't find any freeware).

Any and all help is much appreciated. ^_^

[Luke122]

You can try to boot the computer with both drives attached, and then run the windowsxp checkdisk app on the vista drive to see if it can recover it.

Also, try to boot the vista drive attached to diff sata ports on your mobo.. could be an issue with that too..

[AKA_RA]

It doesn't even see that the drive is formated when i load it up in XP. I tried a free app that looked for deleted files, and amazingly it scanned the unformated drive.

Sadly, it found nothing. I seriously cant figure out what happened to this drive. From what I've read, my best guess is that the partition table is corrupted, but i haven't tried to scan the drive with that intent due to the fact that all software i could find wasn'e at least $50. I plan to scan the drive with such a program, because the trail versions apparently scan to see if anything is recoverable. I may be forced to buy something to get that all back. I realized I had transfered a bunch of pics and videos off my phone, so I really need that drive now. -_-

...but there will be time for that later.

Today, I get to go see Slayer and Marilyn Manson.

...I think thats prolly the best possible way to relieve all this built up stress...

:D

[crenn]

Disconnect the IDE drive and try to boot up from the SATA drive.

[AKA_RA]

it doesn't boot, it doesn't appear formatted no matter what i do

[crenn]

Was it near any type of magnets at all?

[AKA_RA]

i never even took it out of the case, i just unplugged the power and sata cable

[haha49]

i had that problem change the boot order and you can use that drive agian..

[AKA_RA]

that isnt the problem at ll. it does not appear to be formated when loaded in any OS. if i try to access it, it jusrt asks me to format.

I got a demo program that looks for basically all info on every last bit of the drive, even if its unformated. I ran it for a while before i left my house for the night, and it had already located over 300,000 files that still exist on the drive. The thing that sucks is, i cannot restore the files in the demo verison, i have to register it, and thats $60.

I also have the issue of the fact that the drive is 320 gigs, and it was about 2/3 full. If it doesn't allow the actual restoration of files on the drive itself, ill prolly have to wipe a bunch of my 40 gig drives and use those as temporary stoage until I reformat the 320 gig SATA drive.

[calumc]

have you tried booting from a live linux disk? this will give you a definitive answer whether or not it is formatted

[Chev86]

Ya try Ubuntu its free to download and easy enough you can just pop on and see if its good or not. and if thats they problem you hd might have failed so check your Warranty on it.

[.Maleficus.]

have you tried booting from a live linux disk? this will give you a definitive answer whether or not it is formatted
Just booting from the disk won't give you any answer at all... Because LiveCDs run off the CD and not a HDD, you could actually run the computer HDD-less. You'd still need to go through the various steps to find out if it is or isn't formatted (through the installer, mounting the HDD, etc).

AKA_RA, get File Scavenger. It isn't free, but it's so handy and useful you'll thank yourself for getting it. It recovered files from my mom's camera memory stick that had been formatted at least 5 times after the pictures were taken. Trust me, it's definitely worth it.

[AKA_RA]

th HDD shows up fine in XP, wont say its formatted though. i ran some random recovery software to see if anyhting shows up, and it did. after several hours, it got to about 40% and showed over 300,000 "recoverable" files. It didnt get AST 46% though, so either the scan takes for freaking ever, or it froze the first time. If it froze, i can imagine several reasons, like bad sectors, etc. I plan on running File Scavenger as soon as I get the chance.

I was considering RMA'ing the drive after getting the info off it, but I don't think the drive is bad, just the partition file. Well see.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Boot off he install disk. When my comp died the place I was doing work experience at showed me a free ware program that allows you to access the busted HDD/computer and copy all of your files to a new HDD then format the old one. Worked great, managed to retrieve everything I needed. Can't remember what the program is called though. By the way the HDD scan will take forever, my 200Gb IDE took about 6-8 hours to scan in three parts (surface,?,total scan).

EDIT:
I just found these, may be of some use to you.
http://www.data-recovery-software.net/Data_Recovery_Download.shtml#demo
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/hdd-recovery.html
http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm

Hope these help.