for the 2nd time now i've had a hdd in my external usb caddy just suddenly lose it's formatting. :( last night i was copying a file from it to my local drive n it just stopped & vanished from explorer. after a power reset i get the lil 'new usb storage device' icon in windows but it doesn't appear in explorer as a drive. i checked in disk manager & it's there as unallocated.

i use active-undelete to recover the data i want, then reformat the hdd using disk manager in xp & it's all good again... but i wonder if it's the hdd or the caddy that is doing it? the data recovery is very time consuming :(

anyone else had similar probs with the formatting of usb hdds? ntfs btw.

By "unallocated" you mean "completely devoid of any valid partition table" and not just an unformatted partition right?

Due to you being able to recover your files I'd say your filesystem is intact and your partition table is just getting axed. Have a look here for information about the format of the table. To backup the partition table under linux just use "dd if=/dev/[device name] of=/tmp/goodpartitiontable skip=445 bs=1 count=64". That should backup your normal partition table. Wait until the disk is dead again and redo the above.. check the difference between the two files and if they differ then your partition table was corrupted. Swap the if and of parameters and bam you're fixed. It's not like you'll be changing partitions on it all the time.

[edit]
Obviously don't use somewhere covered by tmpwatch and use different file names for the good and bad partition table images.

last edited by dafugg at 16:32:40 26/Feb/07

Hehe demon, I was googling your sig quote when I came across this crank physics page, for some reason it made me laugh.

cheers for the info dafugg.. i'm gonna try the active partition recovery next time it happens :D

heh, nice find icewyrm :D i'll keep that site to debunk the crazies ;p the original quote in my sig comes from Spaceref about the new spitzer space telescope not finding the expected water spectrum fingerprint on a planet not in our solar system. it appealed to me because of the acceptance with which top level scientists admit their predictions were wrong in the face of new evidence.

that might be how they get to the top level!

my usb stick occasionally seems to lose it's filesystem, has happened maybe 3 or 4 times in the 12 months or so I've had it. I don't have to get data off it though cos it's usually just tv shows or other inconsequential stuff I'm copying between a couple of pc's

last edited by Jim at 20:06:10 26/Feb/07

could be! i never admit i'm wrong n i never got to the top level. actually i did once. admit i was wrong. not get to the top level.

my usb caddy has a 120gb wd hdd innit... which is why the recovery sucks. it's still going.. on my work pc :D most of the stuff is backedup elsewhere... but stuff like my mp3s that i ripped from my music cds... i'd rather let the recovery prog get 'em all back than rip them again :D

yeah never had it happen to my hdd yet, I always presumed it was just the storage method used in usb sticks when it happened to my usb stick

Well maybe if you had quake on your hdd it wouldn't try to commit suicide ... blasphemor ...