External HD corrupted and unreadable

[wilson_wwsc]

I recently reformatted my computer to run Windows 7. My external hard drive was unplugged during the process, and it has been working fine since installing the new os until just a few minutes ago. I think I heard it turn off then back on. I tried to open it up but it says that it is corrupted and unreadable, and that I need to format the disk to use it.
Did I just lose all my data, or is it recoverable?
I hope it is recoverable.
Thanks for any help

Edit: it says The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable. It is a Buffalo Drive Station, 500gb.

Edit 2:
I ran chkdsk/r e: in cmnd prompt and it says this: That type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is HD-CEU2. Corrupt masterfile table. Windows will attempt to recover masterfile table from disk. Windows cannot recover master file table. CHKDSK aborted.

[sfwdiy]

It's possible that it's the housing that the external drive is in. From time to time the housings go bad and the drives become unreadable. Sometimes you can just slap the old drive in a new housing and be good to go.

If the drive itself is corrupted but mechanically OK there's a good chance you can get most of the data back.

If the drive is suffering mechanical failure you'd probably have to look into a professional data recovery service, but that can get expensive. How valuable is the data to you?

--B

[Rally Dave]

I had this happen to me about a month ago. I did some research and found this product:

http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

It's free to install and run, but if you want to recover your data you need to pony up the $$$.

It worked great for me. I was able to get all my photo's and documents back. Use it with confidence.

[wilson_wwsc]

I found that easeus has a data recovery program that works well. They let you recover 1gig for free, and it works for me. Looking at data recovery services online, there's no way the rest of my data is worth that much. The 1 gig free covers all the important stuff that I didn't have saved elsewhere (I had my pictures on dvd).

[TWoods450]

http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/

best of the best. Pricey but good.

[humgunner]

I had a similar experience. Power went out while my external hd was on. Power came back on and ex hd said it had zero kb on the drive. Also said data corrupt.
I used http://www.piriform.com/recuva and it worked great. The only problem is you need space on another hd to store the data you recover. For me this was a problem because I had a 500gb ex hd and only a 200gb computer hd. I had to get another ex hd to store the recovered data on. But the good news is it worked and i got everything back.

good luck to you

[Wherryj]

I had this happen to me about a month ago. I did some research and found this product:

http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

It's free to install and run, but if you want to recover your data you need to pony up the $$$.

It worked great for me. I was able to get all my photo's and documents back. Use it with confidence.

I've used that program before. It gets almost all of your files back. I used it quite a few years ago, so I don't know if they have fixed the most annoying issue.

All of the files come out with random string names. It makes it a bit difficult to find things, although not impossible. If you are trying to recover files like pictures, it is a good program.