Drive Station Combo 4 no longer recognized.

[Room335]

My Drive Station Combo 4 is no  no longer recognized.  I had a BSoD  while the drive was attached. When I reboot, the computer will eventually show the drive but I can not access it. The WIndows Explorer will freeze for some time and eventuially I get a message to format the drive.

 

I've tried

- both firewire and usb 2.0 connections

- error checking under properties but the unit is not recognized.

 

Model HD-HS1-OTQ

Windows Vista OS

 

Any thoughts on how to bring it back? I've read about frimware upgrades on other units but can't seem to find it for this unit.

[jo342]

Try plugging the drive through usb after the computer is turned on, possibly in safe mode if need be. Open up your disk management utility, and see whether or not it has a recognizeable file system. If it shows up as FAT32 or NTFS, try plugging it into a different computer. Otherwise, if the filesystem is RAW or unrecognizeable, the drive will need to be formatted.

[Room335]

in safemode Its says raw. Does that that mean my drive is wiped out? Is there anyway to recover the data?

[AngelsAbys]

If it is showing as RAW you can try a trial of a recovery program to see if the files are accessable, if they are that is one option for you to pursue.  The second option is contacting a professional drive recovery service and explain the situation, and see how they may be able to assist you.

[Room335]

Do you know have any trustworthy programs that you could suggest?

[AngelsAbys]

you can google programs that offer free trials, otherwise 2 off the top of head are UFS Explorer and winundelete

[Room335]

thanks, I'll look those up

[Room335]

Additional info for those reading this thread: It occurred to me that I got the BSoD  while attempting to make a backup of my system. I had use Acronis for the first time, about one hour into the backup process  I got the BSoD.  I'm not going to try that again!

[Room335]

Follow up:

 

I was unable to get windows Vista to communicate with my Drive Station including in Safemode. I did see that it was listed in safe mode using the steps outlined above. I  tried it on different computers and got the same reaction, I could see it but not connect to it. None of the software would work because the drive would not completely connect.

 

For a last ditch effort I decided to remove the drive from the Drive Station enclosure and mount it in my PC tower. That worked! Windows found it and corrected the partitioning errors and I now have all of my files. My reasoning was, that in mounting the drive in the tower, I assumed that maybe a direct connection would work by bypassing the Buffalo circuitry. Looks like I was correct.

 

I've decided to leave it in my tower as I've been wanting a one terabyte drive and I'll purchase another external drive for my back up as well as look at some of the internet backup servers for an off site redundancy back up.

 

Thanks for all your help.