I need some help.

[negative_creep]

Ok, so about a week ago my hard drive suddenly stopped working for me.
It is connected to my computer with an external usb box called safestore.
The day it went down a message came up saying something about files being corrupt and asking me to run chkdsk.
Anyway, I looked into the properties of the drive and it says that the file system is raw now, and it was ntfs before this. I cant do anything with the drive now, it still says there's corrupted files when i try to open it, and I cant run an error checking scan or defragment it from the properties menu.
I got the recover my files software and serial number last week, and did a scan on the drive. I'm pretty sure I did a complete format recover scan, which ran for like 4 or 5 days, and doesnt seem to have done anything.
At first I had a bunch of file types highlighted, but once it was going for a couple days, I only left a couple going. It found some avi files before I stopped it from looking for those, but I cant preview those, and I tried putting them on a disc, and cant find any files on it when I put it in my dvd drive.
The last thing I tried was running a fast format recover, and it didn't find anything. The program did find files, like I said, there were some avi files, and there were a bunch of jpegs that were found, and I was able to preview them until I unhighlighted jpegs in the file types, after that it said all the pics I previewed were corrupted.
I did a file search for just mp3s before anything, and it was finding them, but I stopped the search because it was taking too long, and I couldn't preview anything.
This is whats in the event log, now I'm not sure if its just the last search or all of them, but here it is...
EventLog
Searching for partition entries (Method 1).
Cylinder = 30515
Tracks per Cylinder = 255
Sectors per Track = 63
Quick Found Partition at 63
Found 1 partitions.
Partition at 63 is NTFS
Drive = 1
Bytes Per Sector = 512
Cluster Size = 4096
MFT Start Cluster = 786432
MFT Record Size = 1024
MFT Index Size = 4096
Total Sectors = 490223411
Total Clusters = 61277926
Sectors Per Cluster = 8
Attempting to read the MFT for drive 1\
Not a valid $MFT
A total of 0 file(s) were located.
Time Elapsed: 8.98826666666667 (mins)
Searching for partition entries (Method 1).
Cylinder = 30515
Tracks per Cylinder = 255
Sectors per Track = 63
Quick Found Partition at 63
Found 1 partitions.
Partition at 63 is NTFS
Drive = 1
Bytes Per Sector = 512
Cluster Size = 4096
MFT Start Cluster = 786432
MFT Record Size = 1024
MFT Index Size = 4096
Total Sectors = 490223411
Total Clusters = 61277926
Sectors Per Cluster = 8
Attempting to read the MFT for drive 1\
Not a valid $MFT
A total of 0 file(s) were located.
Time Elapsed: 9.25 (mins)

I'm pretty sure this is only the last two searches.
If anyone can help, please reply.

[negative_creep]

I forgot to add that after the 4 or 5 day search, I realized that I didn't have the latest version of rmf, so I did update it right after the search, losing all the files it did find.
I have just started a new full format recover search, and left most of the default files checked in the options.
I added wave files, and it already found some that I could preview, so it seems that there are readable files there.
Also there is a box that says recovered partition 1 beside it under the search results. This didn't come up last time.
The drive contains mainly video and music files, so I don't know if I should be searching just for those. I was hoping that it recovered the lost partition or whatever, and I didn't have to search for those separately, because I have read that it takes longer to do it that way.
I hope that with the update, it doesn't take 4 days again, to complete the search, but it may have only done that because it was an older version. I don't even think that it showed the os items found option on the search results in the older version, so I am hoping that this rebuilds the file system or whatever it does.
I bought this drive about 4 months ago from future shop, and it is still under warranty, so I was told to bring it in there and they might replace it, but I want to see what this program does first.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[GDH]

From what you describe I would expect that you will get all your files and folders back.

The results you describe in your earlier message are a bit odd, but I would like to get you to run the latest version to see what happens. It is important that you use the latest version as we continually release updates. Before you do a search, click the UPDATE button on the main program screen to make sure. It will tell you if there are updates available.

In your case I would run a "Complete Format Recover" of the "physical drive" for the default selected file types ONLY (.bmp, jpg, avi, zip, xls, .doc, .pdf, .wav).

In the progress window you should see "Files Found" - these are the default selected files types which when found are displayed in File View of the results screen. They are found by their header and footer and will have names starting with "Recovered....".

More importantly in your situation the progress widow will list "OS Items found". These are MFT records, and each OS item found represents 1 file with full file and folder structure - so you really want this number to be big!

A the end of the search the program will rebuild the file and folder structure and display it in the results screen. Click on the files found to preview their content.

Let us know how it goes - your drive sounds a bit screwed up but i think you should be OK.

[negative_creep]

I updated the version of the program I was useing right after my first format recover search, so I am up to date now. I have the complete format recover search going right now with only the default file types selected, and its 19 hours in, and it is showing 24090 O/S items so far.
The only thing that worries me is that the search progress roughly reads 81700000 of 490234752, and the green bar is not even a quarter full after 19 hours. If this is normal with a drive that is mostly music and video files then its not a problem. I am going to leave it running to see what happens anyway.
Thank you for replying. It is reassureing to hear you say that I should get my files back. It has recovered over 700 of the default file types.
Thanks.

[Kelevra]

From what you describe, it sounds like your drive started going bad, rather than deleted files. If it is physically bad, then the recovery program will try to read bad sectors repeatedly. This can add a lot of time to the search. The professional recovery houses will make a bit streaming image of the bad drive using a program like Norton Ghost to make an exact copy to another drive the same size or larger.
Once you have an exact copy of the drive, including any bad sectors, the recovery program will be able to run the search on the copy drive much faster. When a drive starts to go physically bad, it just gets worse as you run it. It may continue to deteriorate , with less recoverable data as it runs. Make sure you remove the bad drive after you have make the imaging copy. BTW, it will still take a while to search audio or video files but hopefully much quicker than you are experiencing.

[negative_creep]

The second search I am running right now seems to be going quicker.
I did not have the most up to date version of the program, so I think thats what slowed it down.
I am going to let this search finish, and if there is nothing I can do from there, I am going to take the loss, and return the hard drive for a nother one.
The tech guy at the store I bought it from, told me that useing a data recovery place to do this would cost way to much to recover my stuff.
Only time will tell if I can recover anything.
Im not even sure how to creat a disc image, but Im guessing I need another hard drive to put it on to do so, right?

[Kelevra]

Yes, you would need a drive at least as big as the drive you are trying to recover. Because after running the recovery search with RMF you need to save the files to another drive because you can't save them to the drive you are recovering from, you have to have another drive anyway. One possibility is to get an external drive bigger than your present drive and partition it to the same size, (or slightly larger), and create a second partition with the remainder that is large enough to save the recovered files. ie, your present drive is 120GB. You get a 250GB second drive. Partition the first part at 121GB and the second with the remainder, then you can image your old drive with Norton Ghost to the 121GB partition and recover the files to the second partition.

[negative_creep]

There is a possibility that this program might rebuild the file structure or something like that , right?
I am hoping that it will fix it well enough for me to access the drive without doing a disc image on a new drive.
I hope I can at least burn all the saved files to a bunch of dvds and access the files from those.
The search should be done soon, probably tonight. Once it is I will see what I can do, but I may have to post here to get some help with that. It depends on what comes from the search.
In the search results so far it does say Recovered partition 1, and its like 1 kb. I was hoping that meant that the damaged partition was the problem, and rmf fixed it.

[negative_creep]

but every time I try to just burn 4 gb at a time onto a dvd, the dvds don't show any files when i try to acess them.
I thought it would work like a data disc, where I can write the files, then open them through the dvd writer.
If I can do it with dvds, I will, that will save my 100$ for a new 250g drive.
If the new drive is my only hope, can I add another external drive without resetting the computer and losing the search results?
How do I get the files on a new drive?
Someone help, I have been waiting all week for this search to finish.

[GDH]

Please try a different DVD. There have been some reported issues with -R DVDs, so if possible please try a +R.

If you do purchase a drive, purchase one with a USB2 connection. This way you just have to plug it in via a USB port and the drive will instantly appear - you should not have to reboot (after which your search results would be lost).