HD Failure?? Hard REboot during error checking

[mattydies]

I was running the windows drive tools "error checking" the other day, just to see if my drives are healthy (I had no reasons for doubt, but it seemed like a good idea). I was forced to run at the next windows reboot. I rebooted, and the check was running smoothly. Well long story short (after using my monitors other input) I could not see what was happening with my computer. The hdd light was on, and sounded like it was still running. I grew tired of waiting and held the power button to shut down.

When I booted back up my storage hard drive was no longer recognized in windows. I rebooted again and a message appeared (from Nvidia software? as I have an Nvidea chipset) asking about formatting the hdd.

Is there a way to attempt a recovery of this drive? I know nothing of drive recovery.

:help:

[mattydies]

OK so I did a bit more reading and work. The drive did not show up in BIOS, so when I restarted windows I went through the promts from NVidia. The drive is not showing up in my computer, BUTTTT it does show up in "windows drive manager (?)". I downloaded a few data recovery programs, and they now find the drive, files, etc.

My interpretation of the software, is that they want me to copy the files to another location. I do not have enough space. (148 gig raid and 600gigs+ used on 750 gb drive).

Does anyone know of software to restore my hdd to its old self?

Or do I just copy and make the best of it?

[JD]

Recovered files need to be stored onto a different hard drive. Recovery programs do not write to the drive being recovered as to not damage any possible files on it.

So if you don't have enough space, either pickup another drive, or if you have other PCs, setup network shares and save to those.

[mattydies]

Hmnmm... I will weigh my options and do something or other.

Thanks jdrom17