External Hardrive partition table recovery

Question

I have a bloody USB Maxtor Personal Desktop External Hardrive with 500G. The partition of it always cannot be read after OS resetting, and windows will prompt to format the partition. Anyone knows how can I solve this problem ?

Answer 1

You may use the free EASEUS Partition Recovery :

• Recover deleted or lost partition quickly and easily.
• Use it with ease: a wizard interface walks you through all the partition recovery process.
• Offer several optional scan areas helps locate the lost partition quickly.
• Support FAT, NTFS, Ext2/Ext3 file system.
• Support Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7.

You can also try DiskInternals Partition Recovery (commercial, but with a free trial).

Answer 2

If I were you I would move the harddisk out and test it with internal SATA connections. This way it's easier for the low level programs to access it and also remove the USB interface from the troubleshooting equation.

Back then when I had corrupted partition tables I will simply recreate it under a software called 'ranish partition manager'. http://www.ranish.com/part/