XHDD reads as Local Disk(F:), cannot be opened!

My XHDD (external hard drive disk) is unreadable. I can't access it, or read the files. It is supposed to autorun, but doesn't. When I double click it in My Computer, it claims the disk isn't formatted, and asks my to format.
As we all know, formatting a hard drives erases all the data - all 500 GB :cry:.
I know there are tools to recover hard drives. I tried using SpinRite, booting it up from a CD, to find out that it can't read 'sector 1' or something. There might be a recovery tool out there, though.
But I don't want to send my XHDD away to Seagate, so I was wondering if anybody could help me out. Help me fix my baby. :(

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Originally Posted by Brenya

My XHDD (external hard drive disk) is unreadable. I can't access it, or read the files. It is supposed to autorun, but doesn't. When I double click it in My Computer, it claims the disk isn't formatted, and asks my to format.
As we all know, formatting a hard drives erases all the data - all 500 GB :cry:.
I know there are tools to recover hard drives. I tried using SpinRite, booting it up from a CD, to find out that it can't read 'sector 1' or something. There might be a recovery tool out there, though.
But I don't want to send my XHDD away to Seagate, so I was wondering if anybody could help me out. Help me fix my baby. :(

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Hi Brenya,
this same thing happened to me on my first external...and I tried recovery software and hunted the net for answers....
well, since I have quite a few large externals, I figured out
how to avoid this situation....with your pc, just boot normally
but do not connect external drives till your system has fully loaded.....then plug in your usb and your firewire drives and you should not have this problem...if that notice about formatting surfaces ,just ignore it , the problem is that sometime the hard drive boot sector(where the addresses for
programs,movies etc is somehow not fully read....the windows
default is to send you a message that you need to format as it cannot read or locate the files) by waiting ,the pc usually gets the complete address and the drive appears on your drive list. since following this procedure I have not lossed another 500gb hd.

the exception is of course, if you start hearing noises and clicks , you should start transfering to a replacement drive
some hd failures have occurred with 3to5 years(OLD ata drives use)....go for
hd rated for servers, they last the longest (sataII)
nothing last forever, you just need to be aware that some
units that are old, fail with very little warning.

I hope this has been a help
sorry for the delay....i believe most of the software guys are
playing halo3....and are preoccupied.

I do hear clicks. Like if I empty my recycle bin without having used my external hard drive after a while, the XHDD clicks. It also clicks if I play a movie from the XHDD, pause it, and then play it again. I thought the was normal!?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brenya

I do hear clicks. Like if I empty my recycle bin without having used my external hard drive after a while, the XHDD clicks. It also clicks if I play a movie from the XHDD, pause it, and then play it again. I thought the was normal!?

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here is info on deathklicks
StorageReview.com - Tiki : DeathClicks

Try googling "repair mbr" or "partition repair" and see if you can get your data back. The MBR is the master boot record and without it even a non booting drive cannot be seen. It can get corrupt and there you go. I do not have any external drives and have not had anything like this happen to me so I don't have any information just the suggestion. Also to find more specific information you can try googling something like "external hard drive boot record corrupted".

Then again I have read some bad things about cheap externals by Lacie, Iomega and Freecom, where its said that their enclosures are so poorly ventilated that even if they contain high quality brand drives, overheating can be disasterous.