Hard Drive failure + External HDD Failure Similtaneously

[st3ve1]

The other day I was workigna t ym computer, when it started to show tell tale signs of HDD failure, and then would not boot, could hear thrashing and clicking etc when trying to read it.

I was pretty annoyed about that but I thought oh well its all backed up just need a new HDD.

So got a new one ordered all specs reccommended by the computer manufacturer, installed by a preofessional too.

*** was going well, new OS flying along nicely so I went to my external HDD to transfer some data. Uppon trying to open my 1.5tb external HDD I realise windows cannot read it, although it is shown in "device manager" as a usb sotrage device. My other lapotop wont read it, nor a mac, nor linux even with force boot command.

I then go to my emergency backup 320gb hard drive with a small fraction of my important stuff on it. this 320gb hard drive WAS readable when I installed my new HDD with OS on it, but I went to the 1.5tb first as it had more on. But now even the 320 GB hard drive cannot be read, by a selection of computers.

I then plugged by 8GB Nokia N95 in and now it cannot even be read.

Complete disaster.

I have tried chkdsk, macs reading all drives, linux force boot commands.

I am quite scared that my new 500gb OS hard drive will fail soon too but I dont know what is causing this please any help much appreciated.

Regards

Steve

 

[hughva]

What OS?
Look in Event Viewer/System for any red marks that may provide clues.
I understand the initial drive failure. but the subsequent failures suggest a major problem with the computer itself. Power supply, memory IDE controller, motherboard?
A virus could do this. There may be some rogue file on the external drive.

 

[st3ve1]

I am using Windows Vista Home Premium.

I have checked for obvious errors in different sectors, including looking for any possible minidump files that could ahve been created when the first hard drive crashed.

I think it could quite well be a virus that has jumped ship between my different harddrives and taken the others down in the process.

The question is what can I do to recover the data? It seems to be the NTFS reading error, in that the data is still there, but the drive cannot be read.

Regards

 

[Archean]

You may have a look at TestDisk, its an open source solution, I hope it will help you in some ways. Please do keep us posted.

 

[st3ve1]

That tool testdisk is allowing me to copy files from my hard drive back to my new desktop hard drive so thats a very good start.

Thank you very much on saving me the last 5 years of my digital life

 

[Archean]

I'm glad it helped you, take care and one last bit of advice; if you are using external hdd as backup device; just use it so; as soon as you backup whatever you need to safely disconnect it.

 

[DelJo63]

YES! Disconnect, disable, or power off any devices not needed, especially storage devices.
Why place them at an unnecessary risk to attack or errors?

(also saves laptop batteries for all those USB connections)