EXTERNAL DRIVE CANT READ FILES HELP

Someone has got to help me here. Frankly, I think only an IT Pro will be able to help me but it is worth a shot and it is very much appreciated! Here’s what happened… My brother is an up-and-coming graphic artist and has basically devoted the last 8 years of his life to creating new works and learning as much as possible on the internet as he doesn’t have money for school. Well he recently saved up his money and bought and external drive to save his work on. He saved about 140+ GB on a 200 GB external drive amounting to his various accomplishments. One day he decided to clear out his PC and transfer basically almost all his data on one external drive. Months passed and the data stayed protected and available for use while he struggles on beginning and maintaining his first business. About a few days ago while at a friends’ house he was showing his works of art to a few of his collegues when one of them suggested they could watch on a big screen TV. My brother doubted you could convert the Monitors’ 17” image onto a TV screen but he trusted him and let him do it. The friend messed around with some display settings and some Nvidia settings too. Finally it worked! They were watching his work on a big screen… well after the thrill wore off, my brother decided to showcase his other pieces in other folders and as he clicked, a message came up “Folder is not available” “File is not available” and the like. He was about 6 Folders into his external drive as he made his way to My Computer. Once there he clicked on the External drive icon and a message startled him, “This drive is not properly formatted. Would you like to format now? YES NO” He of course clicked NO. Something was wrong here. His friend tried to fix it and got into a properties window where it showed: “NTFS (or NTCS, NT??) Free: 60 GB , Used : 140 GB”. The whole night everyone tried everything they could do to get back into the folders and the data. From then on the Properties showed: “RAW
Free: 0 GB, Used: 0 GB, Files 0 GB” Let me remind you that these are files that are not anywhere else but in this one drive. My brother feared the worst and let that friend work on it for a few days strongly warning him to never resort to formatting for fear of the consequences. He has been trying to reach this guy and all he has gotten was one message on his voice mail saying that this friend knows someone who used to work at Microsoft and that he may be able to get the data back. We are scared that this guy who doesn’t know my brother may be either “made up” or may not care about the contents of the drive. Ever since we have been trying desperately to get the drive back into our possession. This drive not only represents my brother’s past years but the future of his already struggling business. PLEASE if ANYONE has any ideas on what to do once we get the drive back please contact us Immediately by either responding to this post or emailing me: xxxx@speedymail.org PLEASE, THANK YOU and GOD BLESS

 

helpmehelp;

Do not attempt to use the drive anymore. Call Drivesavers (www.drivesavers.com) in Novato, California at 800-440-1904. They are the best in the business. I should know, they saved my ass seven years ago.

Close Hauled

 

The first problem, where folders/files are unavailable, probably involves NTFS ACLs (access control lists). The second problem, where your drive's properties are shown as raw, could be hardware-related (even a loose cable connection or bad cable). Either way, get the drive to someone who knows what they are doing, as Close_Hauled suggested.

Nick

 

Moving forward, tell him to buy a DVD drive, burn two copies of backups (since his work isn't goin to change) to disc, put one copy in the closet. Keep the other handy.

You should always archive to a removable form of media for disaster recovery purposes.

What kind of computer and OS was the drive plugged into?

As mentioned, drivesavers.

 

Always maintain two copies of back up. That said, I've used Davory with great success. Best option, of course, is to fork over big bucks to a data recovery specialist. From your description, it sounds like something that Davory could handle.

http://www.x-ways.net/davory/index-m.html