Help Drive has just become RAW!

Namsnik

Namsnik

Namsnik

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27 Jan 2007
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Location
Bucks
So I seem to have lost my 2TB drive. What are the best steps to recover it?

This is a WD internal Sata drive that I use for data and some programmes. I boot from an SSD.

History:
Last night I attached a new SSD drive (using internal connectors, not USB) and used Macrium Reflect to restore an image to it ready to relace the drive in a laptop. That went fine.
This morning:
I did use some files from my 2TB drive - so seems to have been ok at that point.
I told Windows update to install some updates and these required a restart.
I shut down then removed the new SSD and restarted.
I started to look at my FileHistory settings and while I was doing that realised I could not see my 2TB drive.

I have used a restore point to try and remove that as an issue.
I have shut down and checked the connections to the 2TB drive - in case I disturbed them
I have tried not to panic.

This is what Macrium Reflect now shows.:
n5sEOX8.png

and Disk Management:
SFXwQj0.png
 
Not sure how you've managed to format your HDD but in the past I've used easeus data recovery wizard to recover files from a formatted HDD
 
I do not believe it is re-formatted. It is a 2TB drive and Disk Management is showing only 900GB. I just looked up on WD website and formatted capacity 2,000,398MB 3,907,029,168 user sectors . not sure I understand this but Macrium is reporting an End Seector of about half that......

It was NTFS formatted if that matters
 
dacads said:
Not sure how you've managed to format your HDD but in the past I've used easeus data recovery wizard to recover files from a formatted HDD
Click to expand...
Downloaded that and chose the partition revovery option. It is still working but looks promising in terms of saying 120k files found and only half way through. Of course I don't have anywhere to restore them to at the moment :( But I still wonder if this is some issue to do with corrupt boot sector or something like that. Hoping that full recovery is not necessary.
 
What OS are you using, as I have had a few partitions and drives get wiped for no reason I can think of whilst using windows 8.1.
EPM is a good tool to use, but some videos and other files, you may have to piece together. A lot of your files may not be recovered in one piece.
 
Thanks What is "EPM"

I am using Windows 8.1

I am still wondering if the fact that the whole 2Tb is not visible tells us anything.

Looks like Easus Data Recovery Wizard - Partition Recovery is going to take 9 hrs more lol (and when it gets to the end I will have to abort due to lack of another 2Tb drive. Maybe I will get the option to save some particular files though.
TestDisk looks more likely to fix in situ as does LinuxLiveCD if I can get my head around it.

But these also looked interesting
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-us (does not refer to Win 8.1)
http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-became-raw/
 
Namsnik said:
Thanks What is "EPM"

I am using Windows 8.1

I am still wondering if the fact that the whole 2Tb is not visible tells us anything.

Looks like Easus Data Recovery Wizard - Partition Recovery is going to take 9 hrs more lol (and when it gets to the end I will have to abort due to lack of another 2Tb drive. Maybe I will get the option to save some particular files though.
TestDisk looks more likely to fix in situ as does LinuxLiveCD if I can get my head around it.

But these also looked interesting
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-us (does not refer to Win 8.1)
http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-became-raw/
Click to expand...

Sorry mate, meant to put EDR, been a long day.:D
EPM is Easus Partition Manager.
That is the problem with data recovery, you need another drive to copy the recovered files to.
The second link may be your best alternative, good luck and let us know how you got on.
 
Well the brilliant news is that I have my drive back!
A few places that said the incorrect drive size being reported could indicate a jumper/driver/motherboard issue.
I switched the cables to use a different set of SATA ports and a different cable. Nothing happened so... I had decided to eliminate a range of issues by waiting for no.1 son to return from Uni and putting the drive in his pc.
But miraculously the drive is ok now.

Weirdly another drive is now reporting an i/o device error. Not sure if I moved that cabling so going to have to try a few things to try to isolate the issues :)

Glad I didn't go through with partition recovery etc - I doubt if they would have been 100% succesful.
 
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