Posted by Dave T on May 11, 19101 at 23:11:22:
OK. Here's a new one for ya. I recently tried to help out a friend reformat his (older)computer. After several attempts to read the setup disk failed we were stymied (old cd-roms suck). So I got this great idea, why not put his HD in my computer and load Windows on his disk that way. His HD was set to master as was my C drive (which was still hooked up). My HD didn't show up and I spaced disconnecting it from the system (big mistake). After sucessfully installing windows on his drive and removing it from my system, I attempted to boot up. It hung itself at the 'verifying DMI pool data' screen and would not budge. I booted from my boot disk and could not read anything from the C drive. After exhausting the easy options I tried (in desperation) to format then, finally, fdisk but no dice. The drive is recognized in BIOS and shows up in Explorer but I can't get it to work. I ran the diagnostic software from Seagate, which basicly told me the drive is fine. Not. Is there anything I can do to get the drive to read and get my data back short of sending it to a data recovery company? If not, is it possible to get the drive to work using low-level formatting tools? Should I just send it in to Seagate for repair? It's a ST320420A BARRACUDA ATA II 20420MB. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.