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Hi, Margarita.
Did I wipe the external drive clean?
Maybe, but probably not. It takes a while to "wipe" a drive; about as long as a reformat, because the system has to write zeroes or ones or garbage - something! - into every spot on the disk, and that can take a long time. So your problem is probably less complicated than this. Maybe you somehow wiped out the partition table and/or the Master Boot Record. In that case, all the data is still there, right where you left it, but you'll have to re-create the signposts to find it.
and is there any way I can retrieve that data?
How "techie" are you, and what tools are at your disposal? Do you have a geeky friend who can help? (One that you trust A LOT?) With luck, skill and tools (or maybe just two out of three), you and your friend might be able to recreate the signposts and recover all those files, maybe in minutes. ;<) And maybe not. :>(
To clarify, by "Disk Manager", do you mean the Disk Management utility (diskmgmt.msc), which is included in every copy of Windows since Win2K? Or some third-party utility? When you post back, please give more details, like: How big is the HDD? USB or SATA or ?? Formatted NTFS or FAT32 or ?? How many files and how many MB/GB/TB involved - a rough guess is good enough. What operating system and file system was your friend using on this disk? What else is on the HDD that might be in danger - or already lost?
Disk recovery services are available, but they typically are expensive - hundreds or thousands of dollars - and probably not worth it in this case.
RC
R. C. White, CPA
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-9/30/10)
"margarita17" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...
I am having a problem very similar to this. I am working on a laptop that runs Windows XP. My friend recently let me borrow his external hard drive with all of his music files on it. It showed up on my computer as an F: drive and allowed me to transfer half of the files over before it stopped recognizing the source. Like this problem, the disk showed up in my Disk Manager as not initialized. Now I believe it's initialized, but the entire disk is showing up as unallocated space. Did I wipe the external drive clean? and is there any way I can retrieve that data? Thank you, any help is appreciated - he's going to kill me!
R. C. White, CPA Microsoft Windows MVP
no partition cause I do not want so much drives. So I moved and after I formated my other 1602gb disk to give it to my friend.Done removed. all is left in my desktop is the windows 160gb and my 250gb-back up drive. When I clicked the backup drive it gave me
a message-Access is denied. So I ran disk check and fixed the problem and it forced a dismount and I clicked ok. But after it checked it didnot mount back and now not only is the disk unaccessible but rather gone from the compute. I checked the Disk Management. Its there but not mounting. I did try to initialized but did not work.