Problem with my hard drive.

ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
edited August 2008 in Hardware
I'll try explaining my problem as nicely as my poor english lets me.
I got myself a new motherboard, so I had to format my computer. All of the windows installation was done on my IDE 80gb hard drive. Everything worked out fine with that hd.

On my other hard drive, a 250gb samsung, I put all my pictures and my music so that I could just plug it in and keep using it. (The music took hours to organize by alphabetical order - the bands - then put the songs in the right album folder and then edit them so that everything is perfect, so you can see why I can't lose this information.)

The problem:
When I click the hard drive, it says it has not been formated yet.

Things I've tried:
Since my old pc was xp sp2 and now it's sp3, I tried plugging the hard drive into another pc I have access to that has sp2. Same "this driver hasn't been formated" problem.

It will mean a lot if you guys can help me out. Luckily I wont lose my music since I have an mp3 player, but I will still have to organize it all over again and I will lose my pictures.

Thanks,
Zolthaian (Dan)

ps: ^-^ Nice to meet you all, nice forum!

Oh and this fits the "emergency help" because I need to access my files for an urgent, personal reason.
And honestly, I can't live without winamp. =D

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited July 2008
    That's what you call poor English? Boy, have I got some bad news for people who use it as their first language...

    Trust me when I tell you that yours was virtually perfect.

    Icrontic has just the article to help you get your stuff back: http://icrontic.com/articles/advanced_data_recovery
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2008
    Is the 250gig drive a Sata drive? When you originally set it up was it part of a spanned volume or anything like that?
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited July 2008
    @Thrax: I followed the article by using the testdisk application. I got as far as:
    9r24r8.jpg
    Do you have any suggestions? I don't really know what it's telling me there.

    @Kryyst: Yes, the 250gb is a Sata drive. I can't say if it's a spanned volume, don't know what that is xD (but I do remember I had trouble when I used it for the first time in the other computer. It was something related to linux, I'll have to check on the person who fixed the problem to give you a more detailed explanation of the problem I had before)

    All I wanted was to plug it back in and keep using it like before. I just remembered I had tons of tv shows in it. :P
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited July 2008
    Wait, were you using the 250gb on a Windows PC or a Linux PC? Knowing what that person did "related to Linux" could be very key. Let us know what he says.
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited July 2008
    Ok, I called him and he said that when it was new, it was in a Linux format but we changed it to a Windows format.

    Hope that explains it.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited July 2008
    I wonder how bad rebuilding the boot sector could mess things up. Better wait for Thrax to return and report on this.
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited July 2008
    Sounds like a plan. I'll keep checking if he replies every 15 to 30 min (I'll be on the pc for a while anyways)
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    edited July 2008
    Zolthaian wrote:
    Sounds like a plan. I'll keep checking if he replies every 15 to 30 min (I'll be on the pc for a while anyways)
    Do you see the "Thread Tools" selection, in the second horizontal blue bar from the top of the page, when viewing this thread? Just click it and select "subscribe to this thread" you will receive an email when someone replies.

    No need to camp here and check every so often :)

    EDIT: See attached thumbnail

    Welcome to Icrontic.
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited July 2008
    Oh nice!
    Oo looks like I'm already subscribed. Awesome, thanks Ryder!
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2008
    1st. Does the Sata drive show up in Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management?

    Also this when it was new it was in linux format thing strikes me as odd. When a drive is new it has no format on it at all. The only way it could be formated for linux is if someone attached it into a machine running linux and formated it. To then get that drive to work in windows you have to put it into a windows machine and format it, which will wipe out any information on it.

    Now when you used the harddrive in your previous computer did you have to use any special tools to format it?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited July 2008
    Zolt, go ahead and rebuild the boot sector. It'll be okay. Select "Rebuild BS."
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited August 2008
    xbwlq8.jpg

    Alright, I hit rebuild BS and this is what I got.
    Sorry I took so long to reply but I wasn't home for some days and I got a bit distracted. I'm back now, so... yeah =x
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited August 2008
    =\ It will suck too much if I lose my information...

    So much work for nothing? This isn't fair.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    As noted in my article, your other option at this point is to purchase GetDataBack. It is often successful when TestDisk fails.
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited August 2008
    I absolutely have to purchase it? Can't I download it or something?

    Mm.. I guess I wont have music in my pc or any of that for a while. =\
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited August 2008
    I don't have the 80 bucks lying around to buy the program and I don't think I can dl it, so I guess I'll take the music out of my iPod and start from 0

    How do you take music out of the iPod and what program would you suggest I should use to organize my music, so that I don't have to do that all over again?
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited August 2008
    No suggestions at all? :(
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    Zolthaian wrote:
    I don't have the 80 bucks lying around to buy the program and I don't think I can dl it, so I guess I'll take the music out of my iPod and start from 0

    How do you take music out of the iPod and what program would you suggest I should use to organize my music, so that I don't have to do that all over again?
    If you set your iPod to be seen as a mass storage device (don't have mine nearby, but it's easily found online) you can pull the files off the iPod. You will need to set Explorer to view hidden files and folders. Unfortunately Apple screws with the filenames so you'll need another program to rename your files. I use MP3 Tag&Rename to pull filenames and sort based on the ID3 tags.
  • ZolthaianZolthaian Panama City, Panama
    edited August 2008
    mertesn wrote:
    If you set your iPod to be seen as a mass storage device (don't have mine nearby, but it's easily found online) you can pull the files off the iPod. You will need to set Explorer to view hidden files and folders. Unfortunately Apple screws with the filenames so you'll need another program to rename your files. I use MP3 Tag&Rename to pull filenames and sort based on the ID3 tags.

    I was doing like you said but I ran into a problem with the Mp3 Tag&Rename. There's a big possibility that I have songs like this
    Dream Theater - Lines In The Sand (Album Falling Into Infinity)
    And
    Dream Theater - Lines In The Sand (Album: X live version)

    So both songs have the same name, different album, length.. etc

    So yeah, it says that I may trying to convert some files with the same names... Do you have any suggestions of how I can get around this problem?


    Edit: I just noticed it changed all the songs it could except for the ones with maybe repeated names. I can now identify the problems easily, but they are way too many to rename one by one myself.
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