[Paul-D]

While running chkdsk on my back-up 750 GB HD (Seagate ST3750330AS (Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 - Hard drive - 750 GB) the computer was inadvertantly powered down. On startup, post info said SATA2 (backup) drive "not found".

Drive C and operating system worked fine after losing Drive D. I am running XP with the primary C drive being two seagate (250GB) drives in stripe array and the backup drive above as D:\. The drive spins up at power on.

The checkdisk (with repair) was based on several earlier errors related to D:\$MFT which I was hoping to solve with checkdisk. I'm thinking the interuption resulted in the loss of the ability of the bios to see the drive. I have about 400GB of backup data on the drive.

My critical data is backed up in a third location, but there is much data on the drive that would be "Very nice" to get back. As such, I am not prepared to pay much for recovery. I would like some hints as to how I might recover at least part of data. For example, can I somehow reformat (or partial reformat) and then use free file recovery software to salvage whatever i did not overwrite with the format? Is it possible to rebuild the MFT if that is the cause of my problem? If so, how do I get my system to recognize or "find" the drive in question and what software would i use?

Any suggested path forward, including software, would be appreceiated.

Paul-D

[bp936]

before you do anything like formatting, look if this was the problem, because a very similar glitch happened to me.

the computer was inadvertantly powered down

and I got the same error message.
What happened, is, that I had the screensaver and then the Standby Settings were set to short.
When I increased the time to "6 hours", restarted computer, the external drive was again recognized.

If this is not your problem, then maybe some expert can help you, when they come on line,

[MYobfool]

Have you tried putting the drive in an external usb carrier to see if it can be recognized.

[win2kpro]

Check the Seagate website. Earlier this year they had some models of drives out with bad firmware, and they would recover the data free.

You need to check the Seagate site and see if your drive was one of the ones with defective firmware.

[Paul-D]

Based on BP936 comment, I shutdown the computer and connected (and reconnected) the SATA and power cable to the problem D: drive. I also went into Bios and disabled and reenabled the problem drive. When computer restarted, the D: drive was recognized. I checked out a number of system operating functions including the internet and all seemed normal-----Until----- I tried to access the D: drive in windows explorer.

The C: drive folders and files were viewed without problems but when I went to D: in explorer, the computer hung. Could not move mouse and could not shut down explorer. Could not "end task" for explorer in Task Manager and performance graphs in Task Manager showed the two CPU cores cycling alternately to 100%. Graphes moved intermintantly and mouse would jump at times but system basically hung. Only way I could shut down system was to hold the ON/OFF button for 5 seconds. At the point the system hung, D: drive was showing in exporer with all folders visible.

Seems to me that all my data is still intact on the D: drive but some corruption is causing windows to hang. Any way I can access the D: drive by using a CD or USB? Could a corrupt MFT be causing this symptom?

I have not gone to Seagate since the drive is three years old and has been operating fine during that time.

As before, any suggestions would be appreciated Paul-D

[bp936]

it sounds to me more like Windows is having problems, not the external drive.
Maybe you have a friend where you can double check the external drive