External Hard drive has changed to RAW file system

I have now been able to access Ubuntu Rescue Remix and run test disk on my external drive. I selected Analyse and run both quick search and deeper search (surprisingly both only take around 10 mins each, I thought these scans were supposed to take hours). Neither scan finds any partitions on the disk, so I am unable to do anything further in test disk.

Does this mean my data is totally lost? Is the next step to try and remove the disk from its casing and try installing it as an internal drive?

Sorry to bump this thread again.

I have now removed my external drive from its case and its a normal SATA drive, so I have installed it inside my PC as an internal. When it is connected however, Windows will not boot and the following error appears appears:

Code:

Disk Boot Failure, Insert system disk and press enter.

I tried several times. I have also tried booting from a bootable CDROM (Minitools Partition Wizard bootable CD) but the same error occurs. I try entering the BIOS but after a few minutes the BIOS program stops responding to the keyboard and I have to switch off at the power button and try again (Up to the point it stops responding it works fine and menus can be accessed). Before the BIOS fails I am able to reach the screen where the hard disks would be listed and change the boot priority of them but there are none listed. The boot menu only gives an option for 'Hard Disk' and doesn't state anything about there now being two hard disks.

When I unplug the SATA cable from the new disk I am able to boot windows normally and BIOS remains functional showing my original hard disk. Reconnected and above error occurs again.

The motherboard is Gigabyte S-Series GA-H55M-S2 which is around 4 years old. The BIOS program is called Award Modular BIOS V6.00 (as it says at the top of the screen during POST).

Is there anything else I can do?

Are you really entering into onetime boot menu and choosing your CDROM drive as the device to boot from by clicking on F12 key during the first appearance of the BIOS screen? ( Check the bottom of the BIOS screen as it appears. It should indicate the function keys to enter setup as well as the function key to bring the one time boot menu. On my Gigabyte motherboard it is F12)

jumanji said:

Are you really entering into onetime boot menu and choosing your CDROM drive as the device to boot from by clicking on F12 key during the first appearance of the BIOS screen? ( Check the bottom of the BIOS screen as it appears. It should indicate the function keys to enter setup as well as the function key to bring the one time boot menu. On my Gigabyte motherboard it is F12)

I have tried both hitting F12 (the one-time boot menu comes up fine) and choosing CD-ROM. System disk error still appears, the DVD drive doesn't even initialise. I also have CD-ROM set as first boot drive in the BIOS, with Hard Disk second.

Also since my last message I tried removing the power and SATA cables from the DVD ROM drive and connecting them to my Elements HDD. Windows boots fine and the BIOS can be accessed too, but no evidence of the Elements drive in the BIOS or Windows.

OK, fine. That gives us another method to try Partition Wizard.

Create a bootable pen drive with the Partition Wizard ISO - Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way - and with the present setup - Optical drive disabled and that SATA port to your problem drive - boot from the pen drive and run Partition Wizard.

jumanji said:

OK, fine. That gives us another method to try Partition Wizard.

Create a bootable pen drive with the Partition Wizard ISO - Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way - and with the present setup - Optical drive disabled and that SATA port to your problem drive - boot from the pen drive and run Partition Wizard.

Done this, partition wizard took a while to load, I think it was trying to find 2nd HDD. But once opened to the main screen just shows the original system hard drive and now the pen drive. No sign of the 2TB drive.

I would think that your WD hard drive has failed and is dead.

One last try: Download Datalifeguard Diagnostics for DOS. Extract the ZIP file. Create a bootable MSDOS pendrive again with Rufus.( Choose MSDOS instead of ISO in Rufus.)

Once the bootable DOS drive is created, copy dlgdiag5.exe to the root of the pendrive .

Boot from the pendrive.

Against the Command prompt type dlgdiag5.exe - or whatever that exe file is - to run the diagnostics to check the drive.

If it turns out to be bad it will be a case for data recovery professioanls to retrieve any data.(My opinion.)

( All the arrows in my quiver are gone - :) Wait to see if Kaktussoft or anyone else have any suggestions.)

Nope didn't work.

Code:

No Western Digital drives found...

NON-WD Drive

Error/Status code: 0201