Portable HD now seen as a local drive... can't access.

[Joe Schmuck]

I've been using a WD 500 gig hard drive (My Book) for almost two years with out trouble for work and personal use. Recently I was copying some large video files from a laptop to the WD drive. Something happened during this process because it stopped at some point and I needed to reboot the computer. After this incident, the WD hard drive is now seen as a local drive on any computer I connect to and the only option I have is whether or not to format the drive (which I know I don't want to do).
I removed the HD from the it's case and slaved it with the same results. I downloaded a demo file recovery program and could see all the files on the HD so I assume the drive isn't terminal. The results from one scan of the drive indicated the boot sector was corrupt and I don't have a back up.
Can this drive be saved?

Thank You!

 

[_-..zKiLLA..-_]

um.. did u try connecting it to a different comp? try that, if succesful. copy ur files. then u can format it.

 

[Joe Schmuck]

As I said, I did slave the drive and had the same result.

 

[_-..zKiLLA..-_]

oh k then. ur prolly screwed then. this happens to me with little SD cards and what not. and i've yet to find a solution, sry

 

[Ð88]

without a backup for the boot record file you're out of luck as far as repairing the hard drive. I don't know whether or not you can recover your files but if I were to guess I would say, again, without being able to repair the boot record file you can't save them.

 

[Mammoth]

Hmm I recall a program that can copy any file on any drive as long as the data is there. Shame I don't know what it's called.