Help Please! External Hard Disk Drive files vanished!

leedeetee

Hi all,

Apologies for posting this here, not exactly on SketchUP although I can't access ANY of my files now.

Basically, I keep ALL of my documents on an external hard disk drive. I do this because I work on a few computers so it's easier to move between laptops with an external disk drive.

However, I have turned on tonight and ALL of my documents on my hard drive (Buffallo HD-CEU2) have vanished. Gone. All my wedding photos, work documents and ALL my sketchup stuff. Could cry.

This is all I get now (see attachment). Is there anything I can do? I feel sick.

Hard-drive contents now

ken

Try Recuva, a free file recovery program. Note, I also use an external hard drive, because I am also on different computers as I work.

Hope this helps.

Ken

leedeetee

Thanks, Ken. Unfortunately, I keep getting an 'unable to read boot sector' message and the program doesn't start.

Why has this happened? Have I dont something wrong?

TIG

The boot sector is the sector that starts the disk...
Take a trip to your nearest PC experts and get them to look at the hard-disk - they might be able to recover at least some of the stuff with their various utilities........

leedeetee

Thanks TIG.

I'm gutted. Just remembering so much stuff that's on there - ALL my music (1000's of songs), photos etc, and tons of SU stuff.

Just don't know why it's happened. It hasn't been unplugged or anything.

TIG

Similar thing happened to me but the local PC World's guy ["there are other Tech Support Organizations"] did recover [most] of the hard-disk - it did take over 48 hours and it cost £20 ! But worth it - AND the hard-disk was even [re]usable afterwards, BUT then it had a smaller size ???

Chris Fullmer

I agree, this stuff just happens. Hard drives gob ad after a time. I've recently upgraded to a mirrored array so at least I have some back up against single disk failure.

Chris