So this is the problem: I was reinstalling windows on an additional PC and had the USB drive plugged in. As soon as I noticed that the drive showed up on the "drive list" part of Windows installation I quit out of it unplugged the external drive to prevent any partition/format problems and installed windows on the internal drive. Later with windows installed, the USB hard drive was plugged back in but was not being recognized under My Computer, but was Healthy in Disk Manager. So then I connected the external drive internally. After a few different jumper settings, I finally got it to be the slave. Now when I try to open the drive, it says that it is unformatted. Of course I do not want to format the drive since I have important data on it. So then I took the drive out, set it up as external again and connected it to the original machine where it was working just fine before. When I go ot My Computer and click on the drive it now says that it needs to be formatted (this is on the original machine where it was working fine before) When I run Partition Magic/Partition Info this is what I get about the drive: The 60gigs of where the data used to be (and I assume still is) is shows as UNALLOCATED. The other 140gigs of empty space is shown as an UNFORMATTED partition. I know this is a lot to read but PLEASE HELP! I have important 60gigs of data on the drive and I need it. Also, I don't want to spend crazy amounts of money for a "professional" data recovery place. Any ideas? Thank you.

For data recover use this: http://www.runtime.org/ You will have to determine if the drive is FAT32 or NTFS. I just got done recovering a hard drive with the same problem, and this tool worked 100%. Let me know if you need help with it.

Thanks Ian! Will the free downloadable version of GetDataBack work or do I have to buy a different version? You said you had the same problem...did it also happen during a windows installation? Was the data claimed to be unallocated? Thank you

Well, the software will be able to determine if your files are on there, and will let you view if they are recoverable. However, to recover you have to pay. :( But this program is FAR less than the companies I have heard of that do this. The cheapest company around here charges $5000 and with no gaurantee the data can be recovered! This program is only like $100. Also, my prob was a corrupt HDD, and I formatted the drive, was still able to recover all the information though. Let me know how it goes and if you need more help. Good luck.

FYI. I've had similar problems as yours when connecting a drive greater than 137Gb to a motherboard controller that does not have 48 bit LBA. Don't do that! Drives will disappear and/or the system will indicate that it isn't formatted. I suspect that the boot sector gets messed up.

This has happened to me a few times and I am done with usb external anyting. Never had the experience ever on firewire externals, maybe that's why they are more money...I doubt you will recover the data...damn unstable usb, I wish makers would give up on it and get more involved with firewire. I use nothing usb except a scanner now, and if I find a 1394 scanner, this one is out of here.

OK so I used GetDataBack, and I see all the files. Now to recover them I need the full version of the program. Does anyone know where I can get a full version free? If possible..... Thanks