parameter is incorrect??

[satnone]

heres my problem.. i have a 3 gig P4 with windows 2000 server.. 2
physical hard drives both on the primary ide.. a maxtor 80 GB with my
OS on it and a western digital 200 GB with all my important files
stored on it.. well a few days ago i started getting errors that said
my files r unreadable and corrupt.. this continued happening till i
got so many i had to restart the computer.. after starting back up i
went to that drive in explorer and i noticed the volume label was now
gone.. and when i clicked on it i got this error g:\ is not
accessible the parameter is incorrect.. i tried chkdsk and it did not
work.. i noticed that it says there is no file system anymore.. i
took the drive out and put it in my other computer and it asked me if
i wanted to format it.. i put it back in the old computer and it
still didnt work.. then i tried about 6 different data recovery
programs and recovered about 20 files out of hundreds of thousands..
i have another WD 200 GB with an exact copy of everything that was on
that drive i keep as a backup.. i hooked that one up to the secondary
ide and started burning all of it onto dvds.. when i almost had
everything copied.. my windows explorer froze up for some reason and
i had to restart.. when i went to the backup drive in explorer i
noticed that one also had no volume label anymore.. when i clicked on
it i got the same error.. i tried to recover that drive but i got
nothing at all this time.. thank god i copied most all of my files to
dvd.. i thaught i could never lose my files since i have so much
backup but this is insane... i reformatted one of the drives and i
started getting the same errors again and some files and folders even
dissapeared completely.. so i ran chkdsk before rebooting this time..
it didnt work.. but before it started up chkdsk started running
afterall and found tons of errors and i guess it fixed them.. it was
working fine again and i took the drive out and put it in my other
computer again and tried to access it and again it didnt work.. this
time it said it couldnt access it cause it was corrupt or something
like that.. it had all the same problems again.. i think it has
something to do with the master file table.. but the biggest problem
now is that i dont know whats causing this.. is it my OS or is it bad
hard drives?? i have absolutly no problem with the other 2 drives
(maxtor 80 GB) that i use for my OS.. once this happens do i still
use the hard drives?? ive done quite a few virus scans with 3
antivirus programs.. norton.. bit defender.. and an online virus
scan.. and everything came up clean.. i also ran a few hard drive
tests and they all said my drives were working ok... what is the
deal? can somebody please help me ive tried everything and searched
everywhere online.. i dont know what to do anymore!!

[RoSpider]

I had a problem a while ago with my 40 gig Western Digital HDD.The problem seems to be the same: sudden loss of data, no label on my drive. I took out the cover on my box checked all the cables and powered on my computer. As it powered up I started hearing strange noises from my drive as if the drive is trying to spin up but failed and retried again a couple of times. I started moving the power link to the HDD and finally it booted. Of course all of my data was still lost. I recovered all of my data with GetDataBack which worked like a charm but a few days ago the same thing happened again (the spin up failure) this time without data loss. I digged around and found out that a friend of mine had the same problem with a HDD identical to mine so I concluded that the problem must be with the HDD. I think that there is a shortcircuit in the power socket which stops my drive from spining up (not only ant power up but also while using my computer normally since I experienced lock-ups while trying to access the drive accompanied by the same spin up sounds). I am seriously considering changing my hard drive manufacturer (since I have another 80 gig WD HDD). Hope this helps you solve your problem.

Good Luck

[satnone]

u know its funny u said that cause i totally forgot about that.. mine was doing the same exact thing.. only i always thaught maybe my power cable wasnt making good contact.. ide wiggle it and move it around to try to pin point where it was loosing power.. as far as i know its the cable cause it doesnt seem to do it on my other computer.. and its got a solid connection as opposed to my problem computer.. it felt loose.. either way i think this could have something to do with my data loss.. the only thin is this has happened with both drives and on different power cables.. so thats why my problem is so damn confusing

[satnone]

does anybody know if the drives would stil be good after repartioning and reformatting as long as there r no physical problems?? or r they not safe to use

[RoSpider]

Of course. That's how I recovered my data: I repartitioned my drive (because I could not recover anything with a bad allocation table), used GetDataBack and now I'm still using my drive normally. Try it. If your problem is the same as mine this should work.

Good Luck

[satnone]

yeah i tried getdataback again on my backup drive and this time it worked.. i got everything back.. i have done a 0 erase on the drive and repartitioned it and i now have it in my other computer.. im gonna leave it there and see how it works.. i jsut wish i knew what caused this??

oh and r u saying u repartitioned yours before running getdataback?

[RoSpider]

I had to remove the exisating partition (I had only one) because while trying to recover data the program kept showing error messages regarding the bad allocation table on the disk. So I removed the partition and created a new one. I must say I was sceptical about what result I might get if I tried to recover my data again (after repartitioning) but fortunatly it worked and I got everything back. Since then I've been trying to get some info on what could have caused this but until now without success. If I come across something helpfull I'll let you know. If you should find anything out please mail me at spider.bo(a)gmail.com (replace (a) with @ ... I did this to avoid leaving a valid email address for bots to collect and send me tons of spam afterwards).

[ckeeler90]

i have a similar problem. My WD passport works in a Mac and not in a PC. When I put it into the PC, it recognizes something is there (calls it G:, lets me check the properties, but shows no space used or available). But when I try to open it, it says that the parameters are incorrect. I have a lot of important information on there, so I am hesitant to reformat it. Any thoughts??

Thanks