dave_

Yeah, i'm very familiar with that as i use XP a lot on my machine, so when i saw your post last night ,i'd thought i'd try on the brothers laptop as he's got Win7 as i was transferring files on to his, but all i got I had all the programs, folders, closed down, still the same but it was late so i just shut down the laptop, so i left til later on the next night & it all seems ok now, but there's seems to be a few differences to XP & Win 7 as that procedure you outlined above doesnt have the Policies tab to Optimize for quick removal as shown above. Maybe my ext hard drive was set by default to be Optimized for quick removal?, but wonder why you dont have that facility now on Win 7?

Got it sorted! after my brother called around today as he's more pro-active than me!, he tried it out on this laptop & was able to view the contents of it no problem & then proceeded to try it out again on my own pc (fingers crossed ) thankfully it worked out! so i dont know why, but i my brother reckons maybe since my pc is 10yr old brought the pc out of standby, but it stalled & ctrl +alt+del wouldnt come up so had to press restart on front, but worked ok with the Medion ext hard drive visible on My Computer as (Local Disk G:) since then, Could things like a slow connection like that cause to a hard drive especially if downloading to a ext hard drive Btw; i dont have a second internal hard drive that just happened to be a 8GB USB Flash Drive/Memory Stick inserted at the time (i get lost in the terminology) when i ran testdisk as it showed up two different results compared to just the one when i ran it without it, so thats why i asked that time -> C: System Drive Disk /dev/sda - 80 GB / 74 GiB - CHS 10337 240 63, sector size=512 - WDC WD800BB-00JHA0, FW:05.01C05 Flash Drive/ Disk /dev/sdc - 8220 MB / 7839 MiB - CHS 999 255 63, sector size=512, FW:0.00 MemoryStick? Drive H: - 8216 MB / 7835 MiB - CHS 998 255 63, sector size=512, FW:0.00

I wouldnt have thought about as it seem to display the bubble come up sayin 'Windows was unable all the data for the file G:$'Mft. The data has been lost, this error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere Can u please explain that. At the moment i'm using my brothers laptop with Win7 & is a lot quicker than my ancient desktop & its 512 mb ram (more like like a lamb to his!) The 500GB ext hard disk drive does show up on ''My Computer'' as Local Disk (G:) i'm using Windows XP I just hope it is a faulty port, as the above warnings scare the bayjasus outta ya, you dont know what to do You said System drive was displayed first /sda, what below is/ sdc as it almost has the same size as drive H: Disk /dev/sdc - 8220 MB / 7839 MiB - CHS 999 255 63, sector size=512, FW:0.00 Drive H: - 8216 MB / 7835 MiB - CHS 998 255 63, sector size=512, FW:0.00 Before i go, as this is the 2nd time posting here, earlier on when i tried to post it took a long time & then the browser crashes! & so when i finish here posting, In what i thought was similar to gmail in savin ur draft i thought as you dont actually see the writing down on the left which says 'View auto saved content' in which i thought was a preview, Words cant express..... Its a good thing i have plenty of patients at the moment!

Thanks for the quick reply, but as soon as i saw it i had to make sure i had the right info back with me Cos im all over the place with this happenin. Yes my ext HDD was plugged in but strangely enough not showing up?, as thats the reason i was cautious as not to proceed, also it said further down that site it may not show the actual size of the drive. I have no idea what WD is but maybe you might from the excerpt from the logfile below: Also i should note i'm using Windows XP & the ext hard disk drive on my computer is Local Disk (G:) When i had a 8GB USB Flash drive (H:) inserted a while ago here's what it had: Im no expert in lookin at that, hopeful either, as its been a long & tiring day. If you need more info, just ask, as i dont want overwhelm anyone. thanks

HI, Well i couldnt believe the same when it happened to me, & almost a week later! i have a Medion HDDrive 500GB external hard drive & a HP Desktop 74.5GB I dont know if the same person is still about? or maybe someone has tried out Testdisk since then. It happened last night, but while i thought i was almost there i'd like to know is, that when you run it & select a media etc: when you follow these steps: Select a media (use arrow keys, then press Enter) : http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Running_TestDisk All i got was: Disk / dev/sda - 80GB / 74 GB WDC WD800BB-00JHA0 I dont really know if that's the C; drive which is about the same size, could someone advise as i thought i'd better be cautious & ask someone. Thanks for any help.