Lost hard drive partition?

[vinny]

I've got a iogear triselect 160gb external HD hooked up via firewire to a imac G4 running os10.3.9. Today i ejected the drives to hook the firewire up to my laptop for a file transfer. The #1 partition didn't show up on the desktop. I ejected the drives from the laptop, reconnected to the imac and it wasn't there either! I've got my original tranparancies and the older files backed up on dvd but the last few weeks worth of drum scans are gone.
I've had this HD for a couple years w/o any issues. The other partitions show up. What can i do to recover the partition?

thanks

vinny

[domenico Foschi]

for sure I cannot help you Vinny, but I hope it's nothing serious.

[John Kasaian]

Are you experiencing post-partition depression?

[Colin Graham]

Well, there's always this, but I hope it doesn't come to that, looks like it could be pricey. It may be worth calling them, they do say they give free consultations. Did iogear tech support have anything useful to say?

[MIke Sherck]

Not a problem, you have backups, right?

Right?

[vinny]

Help!

[Tyler Boley]

run disk warrior on it.
doesn't cost much and you should have it anyway.
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

saved my life more than once, best disk utility out there, there's what a tech is going to do anyway.

Tyler

[Steven Barall]

Don't panic. It's most likely a software recovery issue and not a hardware issue. This is a good thing because all you need is recovery software which can be had from many places like datadoctor.org for instance but there are many others as well. Check sharewareconnection.com for possible free software downloads. Don't panic and good luck.

[Frank Petronio]

Run the Apple Disk Utility.app first, see if the drive shows up on there. If you can see it then try running the "Repair" function. If that isn't working, shut everything down and let it set for an hour so that if it is a heat related or sporadic problem, the drive can cool down and you can try again.

If you get it mounted back up the latest work ASAP and go out an buy another drive ASAP.

If you want to spend the money on Disk Warrior go ahead, but for the same $ you could probably buy another 160 gb drive, so YMMV.

Always good to have multiple drives. It varies but they are making them cheaper so after three years it is not unusual for a drive to fail. Those five-year HD warranties are a thing of the past (or you pay 2-3X for a superior drive.)

[vinny]

Frank, i ran Disk Utility and the partition icon appears with the others but it's named differently, instead of triselect1, its disk1s1 and none of the first aid or restore function buttons work with it. I'll try customer support when i get a chance.

vinny