1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

WD Elements 1TB Hard Drive problem.

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by Jonnie1, Feb 23, 2012.

  1. Jonnie1

    Jonnie1 Member

    Joined:
    Aug 3, 2007
    Messages:
    24
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    11
    Today I booted up computer to find that my external hard drive wasn't showing up in My Computer.

    I checked by devices and printers it was there as an unknown disk. Then i noticed the light on my hard drive is blinking which indicates that it has an error. I turn my hard drive off and back on. A notification appears in the corner saying that it cannot recognise the device. It re-installs the drivers fine.

    I re-check to see if it has appeared in My Computer which it hasn't. I go back to devices and printers in the control panel. It is now detected. "Ext HDD 1021". I then go to Administration Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management where it says that Disk(1) is unallocated and a pop appears saying that I need to initialize the disk, with either MBR or GPT.

    I know initializing it only changes the signature of the disk but I am unsure whether to and I am assuming I would have to reformat after doing this.

    I have used multiple recovery tools to retrieve my data, but they were unsuccessful.

    I have tried it on different operating systems too just in case it was Windows 7.

    Sorry if this seems a long explanation but I am trying to let you know what i have done so far.

    Is there any way to save my data or am I screwed?

    I don't have a back up of it because I am a fool and have learnt my lesson but if you could please help. I would be thankful.

    Thanks, John.
     
  2. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

    Joined:
    Mar 23, 2005
    Messages:
    4,261
    Likes Received:
    63
    Trophy Points:
    78
    No! initializing it won't destroy data or partitions it is required for windows to be able to see it,you also select mbr:

    No you are not screwed the data's still there it looks as tho the disks mbr is stuffed up
    easeus or minitool have free data & partition recovery software these can see whats there,however partition recovery should only be use as a last resort.

    You could try a linux live cd of ubuntu & bypass widows for now to see if it can retrieve any data

    for now all you should be doing is reading the disk,like you say intilizing won't hurt it but if you have to set disk type i.e mbr or gpt this could potentially rewrite partition table & we don't want that just yet tho i suspect there will be no choice,bear in mind my advice is what i would do in your position,right now the data & partitions are there just see if you can strip data off it
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2012
  3. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2004
    Messages:
    39,153
    Likes Received:
    134
    Trophy Points:
    143
    if not under warranty then take the drive out of the enclosure & connect directly to the motherboard.
     
  4. Jonnie1

    Jonnie1 Member

    Joined:
    Aug 3, 2007
    Messages:
    24
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    11
    Like I said above I tried using data recovery software (Minitool and icare). For some reason it says it has 0 bits for the capacity and I can obtain any of the data. Why would it say that the capacity is zero?

    Found myself a tutorial for using linux live to obtain the data. I'll try it and see how it goes.

    Thanks for your help thus far.
     
  5. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

    Joined:
    Mar 23, 2005
    Messages:
    4,261
    Likes Received:
    63
    Trophy Points:
    78
    If nothing sees the data or partition table you'll have no choice & initialize i've always found that was necessary before i could begin data retrieval then the software will work that's assuming the housing itself isn't the cause you should remove drive & place it as a slave in the comp,so long as no format is done the partitions will still be there as will the data whether it can be retrieved will depend on what's corrupted

    distrowatch has a list of all linux software there are a couple of specialist recovery OS's one of them is listed in the righ column called "system rescue",you could just copy & paste that into distrowatch search it'll give a description
     
  6. ps355528

    ps355528 Active member

    Joined:
    Aug 17, 2010
    Messages:
    1,059
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    78
    nah.. latest puppy linux is what you want.. a noob doesn't have a hope in hell with linux system recovery live... which doesn't have ntfs read/write capabilities anyway.. it's old and for ide based server recovery, and was usually put on a drive on a server as an image as an emergency fallback ssh to shell emergency boot ..... not windoze desktops with usb drives..
     

Share This Page