From a post in our Computer Help Forum...
"The other day I went to back up my external hard drive onto a dvd and when I turned it on, the computer only read L:Local Drive, instead of L:Seagate. Ok, so I clicked on it and a small window came up and stated hard drive not formatted, do you want to format it now? I clicked no. Is it dead? It turns on and makes a sound like it is trying to work, however, I can't get it to give any info. When I click into properties, all I get is a solid blue pie chart. I went to Seagate.com and they have a program called seatools. do you think I should try this? or what can anyone suggest. I really don't want to lose my most recent designs. DRAT!!!"
(after trying a few things to recover the data, the follow up post includes this one...)
"I went to seagate online and found a data recovery software demo. It is finding a lot of the files and it will be worth the 129.00 or so to get them back. I spoke in an online chat with Seagate and they told me it could cost anywhere from $799-2400 to recover the files. Whoa. I think I'll stick with my bright ideas of just searching the web and do it myself. Thanks for your help, Larry and I hope this works and I can get the files put on a dvd QUICKLY!!!"
I don't mean to NAG but this brings up a really important point... if you don't backup your embroidery files, it can cost you a LOT of money to replace them. You may be able to have a service recover those files for you at anywhere from $800 to $2,400 cost, or you may have to re-download those files, costing you hundreds of hours of your time. And in many cases, the places you bought the designs from will not let you re-download them for free. We DO allow you to do that, but some places don't. If you lose the design, you have to re-buy them, adding even more expense to the process.