Recovery

I have a WD Mypassport 320 GB external portable drive that was working well till recently, when suddenly I could not see the drive letter recognized when I connect to PC. I was told by WD help to use a recovery program if I want the data to be recovered. I used Recuva and the first time the list of 'undeleted' files came up and I recovered one part of it. The second time when I tried, I checked the box 'restore folder structure' option and the list never showed even after 15 minutes. Of course I have about 130 GB of disk filled up. Is there any reason for this? Will a deepscan help? I do not want to format since I will lose all data.

I'm surprised that Recuva can see the drive letter if your pc can't. Have you checked Scan for Non-Deleted Files?

A deep scan will of course show all your deleted files, and on 130 gb will probably take forever to run and produce tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of file to plough through. I would put deep scan to oneside at the moment.

A format won't necessarily loose all of your data. A quick format will rebuild your volume boot record and MFT and leave just about all of your data untouched. You should then run the Scan for Non-Deleted Files option. Entirely at your own risk, of course.

If the drive letter is missing how did you manage to select the drive via Recuva??

Sometimes an inaccessible file system can be corrected by simply running chkdsk.exe in the following way:

Start, Run, "chkdsk.exe e: /f" (without quotes and assuming e: is your external hard drive letter)

Richard S.

I'll close this thread as the OP has opened another, and I'll assume he couldn't find this one.

Benefit of the doubt and all that.

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=31020