corrupted (possibly) Drive (Windows Vista)

i had an external 250gb. i was trying to install Ubuntu on an internal and it needed to create a partition on my internal HD to which i was installing. there was some error and the setup could not be completed. then when i went onto vista to just do regular stuff i find that my external hd doesnt show up in my computer and when i go to disk management it shows up as UNALLOCATED!!! and now i cannot access the files on the external. Any ideas or suggestions on what i can do or is my data gone for ever?

tht means to say tht tehr is no data in teh drive and it is recognising as empty or un partitioned space.. try in ur friends pc...

If you could tell us what the error was (or approximately like) it would help. Could it be possible that you selected the external HDD during install by mistake? Was it hooked to your computer at the time of install? Linux device naming conventions can be a little confusing at times.

yes your data is still there and is safe.
First try to recover partitions with "PTTD Partition table doctor" software by rebuilding partition table in auto mode.
In case of no success with above software try "Get Data back for NTFS" for recovering data.

Exactly the same problem that i faced, although I did that process on the same disk.

After some really selfless help from @virus32win, managed to get back all my data using software like Active@Partition Recovery for Windows (amazing software).

shit shit shit, i used PTTD Partition table doctor, and insted of fixing the external that is unallocated, it unallocated my terabyte hd that is partitioned with Ubuntu istalled on it.

In the image, the now unallocated disk 1 is the drive i use with windows with all my movies and such, the rest of the drive that is fine is for ubuntu.

Also i just found out that when i try and boot from this disk which has ubuntu, it doesnt boot at all.

Disk 3 is the external drive that i have no idea what to do with.

Do not lose your cool. Just try Active@Partition Recovery.

Oh man you did recovery on wrong drive you should have selected drive 3 for rebuilding partition table.

Now you can rebuild partition table with manual mode.Take care on selecting Drives In manual mode it will show your all lost partitions.Select the correct and save.


You can also try other software like Active@Partition Recovery.But take care in recovery process to chose correct drive.

I managed to get my tb hd back up and running with Get Data Back, but i am still having problems with the external, i keep getting weird errors at the end of the scan and it freezes up. any ideas? i also tried Active Partition Recovery

Post the errors here - people may be able to help you

this is using GetDataBack:

this is the error i get when it first scans all of my drives




Then i select the drive, it starts up, at about 97% i get this error:



and also:




It SUPER slows down it says like 10 min left but 1 second on the countdown takes about 5 seconds realtime. and i get a couple more of the same errors

it keeps getting those errors and it goes slower and slower and slower till it is basically at a stand still






.

i also tried to run the scan with another program and it seems to be having the same problems, near the end of the scan it "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"