Question : Data Loss & Recovery - FAT 16 - NTFS 160GB USB drive.  Possible bad MBR or Partition Table

~~{{ Teach me some useful things I don't know, and I WILL GIVE YOU 500 PTS, even if you don't fix my problem. }}~~

I was making a USB flash/thumb drive bootable, in order to put ghost on it, something I've done several times before.  However, I accidentally ran this HP USB drive format utility (http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/23839.html) on a 160 GB external USB connected HDD.  The HDD is a Seagate Baraccuda 72000.9 SATA firmware 3.ADH, connected to my PC with a Bytecc USB 2.0 Drive Mate adapter, model BT-300.  The utility is supposed to format the USB drive (I think Fat16, just like a bootable floppy), and as part of the HP utility wizard I incorporated a boot floppy for the source image (a 1.44, Win98 single disk boot floppy).  It's a long story 'how', but that 160 GB loss represents several years of my life, and SOME of it is nowhere else to be found, including some documentation that I keep for work, as well as other important work data, such as a ghost image of one very large important web server.

When I did this HORRID deed, I was dozing almost, so it's foggy in my memory (that's part of the 'how') ---anyways and however, I am fairly certain that I made it through the wizard, but I was somewhat surprised that the floppy copy operation didn't take as long (aka., I'm not convinced that much, if any data, was actually copied over to the external HDD).  I've since made my bootable USB ghost flash/thumb drive and the operation seemed to take longer when done correctly (total time through the HP utility wizard was about 3 minutes when done correctly).

Currently, based on the above, my suspicions are that the master boot table &/or partition table are corrupted, and that most of the data is still there.  I hesitate to run some brute/blunt tool like fdisk /MBR as much of my experience with that anyhow is 50/50 and some web sources conflict in their discussion of it.  Disksave.exe and/or diskpart might be helpful, but I'm going to research them carefully before incorporating them into a meticulously planned restore for this drive -- for which time, is NOT a factor (I have no deadline, and will be working on this in my spare time, perhaps for a while).

The drive was originally NTFS, one gigantic partition, and I think had about 200 GB of data (lots of software, in .ISO, .exe, .zip, and other formats, among other data types such as .doc's, xls, images, etc.).  Now when I plug it in Windows Explorer shows it as a local disk, assigns it a drive letter, and at first was asking me if I wanted to format it (I've plugged it into several computers).  Now explorer states it is "not accessible.  The parameter is incorrect.", and properties have empty fields for it, including zero bytes used/available. The disk mgmt MMC shows it as 1.01 GB Active Unformated partition, with 148 GB unallocated.

I did a test (DISCOVERY ONLY) with "GetDataBack for NTFS", with "EasyRecovery Pro", and with "Recover My Files".  I have successfully used all 3 of these programs in the past to recover data for clients, and other users I support.   I'm not having stellar success with any of these 3 programs on this occasion though.  Recover My Files is out of the question (doesn't recover many data types), and EasyRecovery Pro isn't finding much at all.  GetDataBack for NTFS shows the Physical Drive as 156 GB, with 1 FAT 16 huge partition of about 1,058 MB.

IMPORTANT:  As far as I know, I have thus far only LOOKED at the USB HDD.  I have not attempted any restoral of any files, or done any modifications at all to it yet.  It is still pristine in it's initial crapped out state.

Answer : Data Loss & Recovery - FAT 16 - NTFS 160GB USB drive.  Possible bad MBR or Partition Table

DIY is a good product, but for a quick free tool, Partition Table Doctor can tell you if you have a MBR problem or partition problem and whether it can fix it.  All free in the demo:
http://www.ptdd.com/download.htm