[RobbyJoeUSN]

My issue is almost an exact parrallel to grendel824's in the solved sticky http://www.techsupportforum.com/f16/solved-external-hd-not-formatted-all-of-a-sudden-200538.html
however, when i first had the issue and did the A-J steps in deleted090308's other sticky http://www.techsupportforum.com/f16/have-you-lost-a-hard-drive-partition-or-files-in-your-computer-194492.html it went through every step succesfully, but after restart the local disk issue and needs format remained, I tried the damaged boot sector instructions, A-F, and also had the rebuild bs command in place of repair fat, upon answering yes to the 2 questions, i followed the backup bs prompt and was also then given the option to repair FAT, that all went succesful, everything was given an okay, and i was able to view all my files and copy what i could, but the initial problem in "my computer" still exists with local disk, and needing to format, although i know the hd is mechanically sound if all the files are existant, additionally, i bought the [email protected] recovery software from lsoft, and it had 3 partitions found, of all "poor" quality, only one of which actually had files on it though, upon trying to use the recover function, it said "Unable to recover the partition because it overlaps with other partition(s)" Sorry, for the mouthful and i will supply any screenshots needed, I've tried dozens of forums and this one, and this software are the only viable solution it seems.

Thanks Again

 

[raptor_pa]

Were you able to recover the files with test_disk? With overlapping partition entries, usually about the only alternative is to recover the data to another disk, zero wipe the disk, reformat and copy the data back.