Personally I think it is probably toast but I have a little 500GB USB powered external drive sitting here that will not function due to user error.

I finally got a young girl at work to do image backups of her laptop but she did not follow instructions. I told her to NOT do this unless plugged in with the power brick... she did it on battery. Of course the battery ran out and the system died as did the external drive.

I've tried using EaseUS Partition Master doing a data and partition data wipe before trying to re-establish a single partition but it fails. Anyone know of any free software or procedure that might help in such a case?

Sigh, it seems that every time I ask something a thought pops in my head. I wonder if fdisk or whatever it is called on a Win 98 SE boot floppy/CD might just work. Years ago I used it on a 160GB drive and it was able to handle the size. Since this boot disk allows for "Large MBR" it SHOULD be able to handle up to 2GB. I'd give this a shot right now but still have around 3.25 hours of file transfers going on.

Any thoughts?

LOL! and, YES, I actually still DO have a Win 98 boot disk. Not often but now and then it is still a good tool. Last I looked you could still download an ISO for the thing.

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Is the drive in a case?

If so can you take it out and hook it up with internal cables and use Disk Management or DISKPART in a command window to fix it?

Yes, it is in a case but not one that you could open without destroying. Even if I could easily open the case it is USB powered which means just 5 volt. I have never had a USB powered external and plan to never do so. I may be wrong but figure that the entire drive runs on 5 volt which would mean that I would not be able to connect a normal SATA power cable.

It really isn't a big deal as the drive isn't really needed. I gave here an enclosure that uses a power brick instead of USB power that she is now using for the images. I'm basically just trying to fix the thing now and then for grins and giggles. The external I gave her is also 500GB. I have no use for the drive or enclosure so no loss. A bit of a weird case with that too. Apparently the enclosure is faulty as to the connectors. I think that the case connectors messed up the drive connectors. It works flawlessly in the enclosure but refuses to maintain connection if a SATA cable is attached and the thing mounted internally.

As an external Disk Management fails to fix the drive. I've never used DISKPART and have no idea as to how to do so. I will look in to it if the Win 98 boot disk fails. Heck, the thing is made by Toshiba and they might even have a diagnostic and repair tool.

It is a tiny little thing, 2.5 inch form factor. You could put it easily in the back pocket of a pair of jeans.

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Just as an update I have done nothing!

Seriously... my next attempt is going to be using a Win 98 SE boot disk. On a 500GB drive the fdisk checks and stuff are going to take forever. I'm not going to tie up my media system for that long and my laptop is 2 days in to probably 4 days of compressing a 4TB drive.

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Jay, consider this article on the Acronis website before you move forward, assuming of course it has a corrupt Master Boot Record as it has links to the relevant MS articles:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/1507

Personally, i have used a Win98SE disk to recover a corrupt MBR (fdisk /mbr) but that resulted in fatal loss of data and i doubt it would recognise a USB external drive.

A better and simpler option might be the WinXP etc installation CD option where the fixboot, fixmbr, bootcfg options can be utilised.

Hope that helps and good luck.

I rather want to see if the 98 SE Startup can handle it and that is the first solution listed in the Acronis article. I didn't think about the Recovery Console in Win XP and am not sure if it would apply as there is no OS on the drive, probably does not matter.

Data loss is not an issue as there is no data or OS on the thing. It was blank when starting a System Image. The battery on the laptop went dead killing the drive. I told her not to do an image on battery but who listens?

I want to do this on my laptop so it will be tomorrow at the earliest before I try. The laptop is still in the process of compressing my media drive.

To be honest I'm just seeing if I can save the thing. It is a little 2.5 inch form factor Toshiba that is powered by the USB port. I don't really care for USB powered drives. If I get it working I'll probably give it away or mayhaps throw in my laptop bag just in case... I can see situations where it might be handy with the laptop if no outlets were available. Bottom line is that I really don't care about the drive.

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