Member Avatar for mikeandike22

I have a maxtor 6Y120P0 IDE drive and I restarted my computer and it isnt recognized anymore. It still says it is there in the device manager but it doesnt show up in my computer. This drive has like everything on it. I need to find like a driver or something but so far wasnt successful its been like 15 mins of google searching here and its really frustrating the hell out of me.

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If the operating system can see a drive at a low level but its files and folders are missing, the safest approach is to stop writing to that disk and follow a disciplined recovery workflow. As suggested, a manufacturer diagnostic is a reasonable early check; as later reported, fixing the drive's partition information can restore access. The important point for anyone with critical data is to avoid any operation that writes to the suspect disk before making an image.

Recovery workflow to follow (in order):

  1. Verify BIOS/firmware sees the disk and check SMART for obvious hardware failure.
  2. Create a full sector-level image of the drive onto a different, equal-or-larger drive. Imaging preserves the current state and lets you attempt repairs safely. Tools exist for both Linux and Windows; choose one that supports read-error handling so the process is robust.
  3. Work only on the image copy. Try a partition-recovery tool to restore the partition table and entries; if that succeeds, assign a drive letter and run file-system checks from a safe environment. If partition recovery fails, run file-level recovery on the image to pull the most important files.
  4. If the disk shows many bad sectors or the manufacturer tool reports physical problems, stop and consider professional recovery.

Practical cautions and tips:

  • Do not initialize or reformat the disk in Windows just to make it “appear”; that will destroy recoverable data.
  • Check cabling, power, and controller ports only after imaging if you suspect intermittent hardware faults.
  • After recovery, keep regular backups and verify them periodically so a single accident does not put all data at risk.

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Member Avatar for dcc

Have you tried running PowerMax?

Member Avatar for mikeandike22

No Im going to try it out. It is really frustrating me because I can see the drive in my Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management dialog but it doesnt show up in My computer. Also with the holidays dont really have a lot of time to troubleshoot. Im going for every available option before I reformat.

Member Avatar for mikeandike22

I fixed the problem by running a program called Super Fdisk which is free. It boots off a floppy and right away told me there were problems with the disk. It fixed them and now everything works fine. I think the problem came about when I was trying to install FreeBSD on a USB drive and did the command fdisk -BI to the wrong device.

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