Master Boot Record (MBR) and Partition Lost After Power Failure

[hkBattousai]

I have a 1TB Maxtor Basics external hard drive. After a power cut, I lost access to the entire data in it; I couldn't see the drive in my computer but the system was slowing down and getting stuck about every 10 seconds periodically. First I tried running CHKDSK.EXE, but it didn't work, it gave the error message "Cannot open volume for direct access.". This message is given when you try to fix a non-existing drive. Soon I came to a conclusion that the partition table and/or master boot record could be damaged.

I installed one of those partition recovery software, "Active@ Partition Recovery 5.3". After a little analysis I saw that I was right. The master boot record was damaged. I read the documentation and FAQ of that program which suggest to fix master boot record first in this kind of situations. I did so, and fixed the MBR. After that, I saw that the previously existing partition was gone, and it is said to be "Unallocated Partition", (i.e; there is no partition apparent). Unfortunately that software had no partition recovery feature, so I had to do something else.

Next I installed "Paragon Partition Manager 10.0". It gave the exact same report as the previous tool did (the MBR was okay (since I recovered it by the previous tool) and the partition was "unallocated"). But, there happened to be a bigger problem. When the program tries to access this damaged harddisk, it gives a read-write error message every 5 seconds. A popup dialog box appears and informs about the R/W failure. There are three buttons on this dialog: Retry, Ignore and Cancel. If you click retry, popups appear forever, so I clicked "Ignore" for 30 or 40 times (it takes 40 x (5 sec) = 3 minutes of tedious work) before doing any harddisk operation (getting harddisk report, etc; even while starting the software). I tried recovering the partition, so it started to scan the harddisk. The bad thing is that there wasn't any end to those popups during the scan, I clicked them for half an hour and the progress-bar didn't even color up! So I gave up using this software too.

Now I need some advice and instructions from you to recover my harddisk.
1) Do I lose my harddisk contents if I create a new partition (and then use an unerase/file-recovery tool)? Or should I find and install another partition recovery software? Which one is the best solution for my problem?
2) What software do you suggest for such a situation?

I will purchase a UPS soon...
Any help or suggestion will be super greatly appreciated.

[primefalcon]

I have a 1TB Maxtor Basics external hard drive. After a power cut, I lost access to the entire data in it; I couldn't see the drive in my computer but the system was slowing down and getting stuck about every 10 seconds periodically. First I tried running CHKDSK.EXE, but it didn't work, it gave the error message "Cannot open volume for direct access.". This message is given when you try to fix a non-existing drive. Soon I came to a conclusion that the partition table and/or master boot record could be damaged.

I installed one of those partition recovery software, "Active@ Partition Recovery 5.3". After a little analysis I saw that I was right. The master boot record was damaged. I read the documentation and FAQ of that program which suggest to fix master boot record first in this kind of situations. I did so, and fixed the MBR. After that, I saw that the previously existing partition was gone, and it is said to be "Unallocated Partition", (i.e; there is no partition apparent). Unfortunately that software had no partition recovery feature, so I had to do something else.

Next I installed "Paragon Partition Manager 10.0". It gave the exact same report as the previous tool did (the MBR was okay (since I recovered it by the previous tool) and the partition was "unallocated"). But, there happened to be a bigger problem. When the program tries to access this damaged harddisk, it gives a read-write error message every 5 seconds. A popup dialog box appears and informs about the R/W failure. There are three buttons on this dialog: Retry, Ignore and Cancel. If you click retry, popups appear forever, so I clicked "Ignore" for 30 or 40 times (it takes 40 x (5 sec) = 3 minutes of tedious work) before doing any harddisk operation (getting harddisk report, etc; even while starting the software). I tried recovering the partition, so it started to scan the harddisk. The bad thing is that there wasn't any end to those popups during the scan, I clicked them for half an hour and the progress-bar didn't even color up! So I gave up using this software too.

Now I need some advice and instructions from you to recover my harddisk.
1) Do I lose my harddisk contents if I create a new partition (and then use an unerase/file-recovery tool)? Or should I find and install another partition recovery software? Which one is the best solution for my problem?
2) What software do you suggest for such a situation?

I will purchase a UPS soon...
Any help or suggestion will be super greatly appreciated.
the more playing round your doing with it now the more you lose, take it to professional computer shop and pay to have it recovered, though you've probably already stopped a lot from being recovered by playing with it

[brad211987]

It kind of depends on what you were doing with the drive. It sounds like you were booting off of it, so, what were you booting? If windows, you can restore the MBR off of the windows cd. For other OS you may need to re-install a boot loader such as GRUB.

[hkBattousai]

It kind of depends on what you were doing with the drive. It sounds like you were booting off of it, so, what were you booting? If windows, you can restore the MBR off of the windows cd. For other OS you may need to re-install a boot loader such as GRUB.
It was an external storage drive.
I wasn't using it for booting.

[Brian 500]

The best product for corrupted drive repair, or if you want to restore a deleted partition, is DriveRestore Professional. Install the product, select a "Lost Partition Scan" and it will immediately detect your lost partition. You can also explore a list of files in the the root directory. A free trial is available for download at www.pcrecovery.com/partition-recovery

[Kattte wins]

I have used Stellar Phoenix Partition Recovery Software which i find valuable for money and time.The software can recover data lost due to partition corruption, partition resizing, file system damage, boot sector corruption, MBR damage, virus infection and human errors.It is compatible with Windows 7.0, Vista, 2003, XP and 2000,...Download free demo, save the recovered files and then use full version

http://www.partitionrecovery-software.com/

[hkBattousai]

Thank you all for your replies.
Unfortunately I have learned that one of heads of my harddisk is broken, so the damage is physical. I have consulted for technical support, and still waiting for my harddisk to be repaired.