chrismackey1972

Hello Members
I really hope somebody can help me with my problem. I have a Western Digital WD3200JS 320Gig hard drive. I believe It's a RAID hard drive, but on the sticker, it lists it as WD Caviar SE.

I really need help from somebody! Yesterday, I was scanning my harddrive. It's in a Gateway GM 5260. Anyway, I put it up for a scan-check. (NOT a virus scan). It was not finished scanning, and I pulled the plug. I moved the computer to another room. When I plugged it in, it would not boot into windows. It brings me to a black screen with white text. It gives me 5 options, as follows:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Last Known Good Configuration
Normal Mode

When I pressed Safe Mode, a list of about 30-40 lines filled the screen. I suppose it was telling me that those got messed up when I pulled the plug, though, I'm not certain. Anyway, the beginning of every line read as follows:

multi(0)disc(0)rdisc(0)partition(1)windows/system/32/Drivers.

Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, all do the same thing.

When I click on Normal Mode or Last Known Good Configuration , the computer goes to the black screen with the windows logo and the blue cursor bar. The cursor bar doesn't even reach the end of the bar. It pauses, for a split second, literally, it flashes to a blue screen with white text (I don't know what it says, it goes by so fast), and the computer brings me back to the screen with the five different options.

SO, I bought a hard drive enclosure, took the hard drive out of the computer and turned it into an external hard drive. I hooked it up to another computer, and it reads the recovery partition just fine. However, when I click on the icon for the partition that has all my files, a message appears telling me that the drive is unreadable. I right clicked on the icon, and the display said: Used Space: 0 bytes-Free Space 0 bytes.

I clicked on the tools menu for the error-checking scan disc option and clicked "Check Now." A message appeared and it said: "The disc check could not be performed because Windows cannot access the disk."

I have over 200 gigs on my hard drive. I don't want to pay Disc Savers $2000 to repair the hard drive. Is there anything I can do? Can somebody please help me?! I'd really appreciate it. I have over 15,000 songs, a ton of vids. I need help!

chrismackey1972

Hey,
Actually, my hard drive is a SATA.

Rob 1

First of all the lines of text you saw in safe mode are normal.
Secondly, there's no such thing as a "RAID drive". RAID is any redundant
array of hard drives, and you can use any drive to do this with.
That WD drive is just a normal SATA drive.

You just need to be patient with it. It doesn't go into safe mode instantaneously.

Regarding the external enclosure. USB or eSATA?

If it's USB, and the drive was previously hooked up inside the computer to a regular SATA connector, then the drive probably just needs to be mounted in computer management.

Right click My Computer > select "manage" > on the left side, Disk Management >
The computer will do a quick scan of all the drives connected to your computer, and you will likely get a popup for that drive where you can mount it as a basic partition.
Needless to say, you do NOT want to select format here.

If it doesn't do the quick scan, simply look in the list of drives to the right,
and if you see the drive there (in the bottom half of the screen), just right click on the Disk number that represents the drive for the disc mounting options.

Oh, and you want to select basic, not dynamic. Dynamic is for RAID volumes.





.

chrismackey1972

Yeah, I just did all that. It says the volume is RAW. When I right clicked on it and clicked "open" it said the volume is corrupted and unreadable. It said the same when I clicked "explore." When I chose properties, it read the disc as: Used space 0 bytes. Free space 0 bytes. In the top right screen, though, under status, it listed the disc as Healthy (Active, Primary Partition.) Any other ideas, or does this sound like something Disc Savers will have to fix?

Rob 1

Interestingly, I found out that WD did make a drive optimized for RAID. Go figure.
I don't think that is one of them though.

You never answered if it was a USB or SATA enclosure, so I'll just jump ahead.

Can you take the drive out of the enclosure and mount it internally to the computer you were trying it out on?
In theory, external enclosures should work the same, but in practice they don't always.

At least if you got it mounted inside a pc to the normal SATA connector, you would eliminate any doubt as to whether the interface was causing problems.

Plus, while it was in there it would be easy to check the drive for errors while you're in Disk Management.

chrismackey1972

Hey Rob,
Thanks for the response. Yes, the enclosure was through USB. The only other computer that I have that operates SATA hard drives is an HP slimline. I opened it up, but there's no way to add a slave internally. I might have to go to Wal-Mart and buy one of their big desk top computers and slave the hard drive in there.

THat's a good idea about scanning it in there, while I'm in disc management. However, every single time I've commanded the computer to scan the disc, it says it's unreadable and corrupted.

My brother found a disc on the internet for $10. He says it is a disc that forces a computer to boot up. Do you think that would fix this problem?

Rob 1

Well as long as the HP has an extra SATA connector, you could just attach the cables and let the drive sit on the table next to the HP.

As far as using a boot disc goes, yeah those can solve a lot of problems, depending on which one you use.

Bart's PE boot disc is a popular one.

Boot discs tend to be most helpful when you've created them off of the system the drive is running in though, since specific drivers and such get added to the disc depending on your specific system.

But there's also applications like Partition Magic which might be more suited to what happened on your drive. Partition Magic is very good at fixing partitions.

All is not lost if none of those work though.

As long as the drive is spinning, you can use file recovery software to save your data. Those are tedious, and take a lot of time though.

Best to fix the partition if you can.

chrismackey1972

I downloaded Bart's PE boot disc, and it needs startup files from the drive that I want booted. I clicked on the damaged partition, and it said it's unreadable. Does this sound like I'm going to actually have to hire Drive Savers to get my files? It sounds like that to me, because I've tried everything you've suggested so far, as well as others from various other forums.

chrismackey1972

BTW, the slimline HP comp that I have does not have an extra SATA ribbon to attach another HD. I was told by HP that that model is made pretty cheap, so no many additions can be made to it. It's an economy computer, so the perks that go with the bigger comps don't come with this one.

Rob 1

Forget about paying drive recovery fees. Like I said, as long as the drive is spinning, you can run recovery software to get your files back.
But it's going to be a lot of work. Best to exhaust your other options first.
If and when fixing the partition fails to work, you can get a few good recommendations from the posters here for recovery software.

The Bartpe disc is one of those that I mentioned that you need to prepare in advance of problems. But Partition Magic is not one of them.
I would give PM a shot before anything else.

As far as the SATA cable goes, which one are you talking about?
From the power supply? If so, a $5 adapter cable will let you use one of the 4pin molex connectors (the ones that power IDE drives).

If you're talking about the SATA data cable, those are very cheap as well.

chrismackey1972

Hey Rob,
I'm talking about the SATA data cable. Where would I plug that in, if I were to buy another one? Also regarding partition magic, I downloaded version 7.0, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it. It told me to insert a floppy 1.4meg disc. This machine has no floppy drive. I put in a cd, but it said the the disc is not recognized. Please make sure the cd door is closed or insert a valid disc. It's blank, btw. I put in another, and it said the same thing. Also, I downloaded it into the HP slimline. I was wondering if anything that is burned onto that disc, will it be readable to the gateway hard drive? Sorry for the questions, but this is all new to me.

Rob 1

Well you didn't say specifically, but the motherboard must have more than one SATA connector on it, no?
I've never seen a board with just one...

Anyway, you can just install and run Partition Magic off of the computers main drive.
And you can do all the repair functions within windows for the drive you're having problems with.