Seagatge 1.5Tb hard drive issues .... here we go again

[Harper]

My boss gave me is external 1.5tb hard drive to look at today. Original problem that the hard drive was not detecting when he plugged it into the computer. However on closer inspection, it turn out that the partition has been deleted. Hard drive as no problems getting detected?

Currently, I have been getting good results with running a hard drive data recovery tool to get his data back. However i am currently scratching my head on why the partition would suddenly vanish? Is this some thing related with plague of faulty 1.5Tb hard drives?

If not, can incorrectly unplugging your USB hard drive delete partitions?

 

[Yami]

If not, can incorrectly unplugging your USB hard drive delete partitions?

Possibly, but only on XP with no service packs installed (and I assume any OSs before XP). Even then it should only shrink the partition to ~140GB.

Malware-based, perhaps? Or user error but that seems unlikely.

 

[KSoD]

Unplugging a USB External drive on any Windows system without first using the Safely Remove Device can cause this. Even in Win7. The drive is active and in use and being accessed at any time, just yanking the USB Cord out can cause data corruption or lose of the partition table. Doesnt have to be on XP Pre SP1 as i have see it happen with Vista SP2.

That is why it is always recommended to use the Safely Remove Device feature, even for drives that are hot swappable.

More than likely the user was done with the drive and yanked it. Which cause the partition table to be lost.

 

[Bruce]

I've seen it where if it doesn't recognize the full size and you attempt to access it it says "the drive is not formatted would you like to format it now"? If he clicked ok it would format the drive