#8 Sudden failure to mount disk

[Anonymous]

ExtFSManager 1.1.3 ... 1.4d4
Mac OS X 10.4.11 (8S165)
I can be reached at ruatango@yahoo.com

Exactly what happened:

I have a 160GB LACIE d2 Hard Drive "Extreme" with 100GB of important, Linux-formatted data on it. I am running 10.4.11 on a PowerBook G4. I connected the drive to my laptop with the USB 2.0 cable.

I downloaded Mac OS X Ext2 Filesystem so that I could mount the disk. I installed the software, and rebooted.

After I came back from lunch, it had all worked, and my drive was mounted. EXtFSManager can see the disk, and reports:"Filesystem: Linux Ext3 (Journaled)"

I then copied a couple of text files over to the drive to make sure things were working. All seemed well.

I then started a job which accessed the files on the drive. Things were working fine. About a half hour through the job, I turned my laptop for someone to see the monitor. I got an error, and the drive was no longer accessible in the finder. I jiggled the cables, but nothing happened. Opening the EXTFS system panel, it can detect the drive, but not mount it. It reads "Disk Error" and "Message:Disk not ready". Disk Utility says: "1 non HFS volume detected. Volume needs repair".

I tried rebooting my machine, and reconnecting the drive. Same result. The drive is no longer accessible.

Is my disk dead? What the hell happened?
Have I lost all of my data because I trusted some freeware?!

If a system log would be helpful, I can include one. Please let me know.