After reinstall, W7 says my 2nd hard drive is in RAW format..help

[Accipiter]

OK, so I have 2 hard drives, an SSD for my OS, and a 2nd drive that I store all my files on. I had to do a reinstall this morning, and since I understand W7 has issues installing sometimes when there's 2 discs connected, I disconnected the power and sata cable from my 2nd drive. So I install W7, and it goes fine. I turn off the computer, plug the 2nd drive back in, turn the computer on, and see the drive letter, but when I click on it, I get a message "You need to format the disc before you use it". So I'm thinking, wtf? I go into disc management and it's listed there as well, but the File System is listed as Raw. So I'm thinking, how the hell did that happen? Since W7 only takes 15 minutes to install on the SSD I use, I decided to install it once again, but leaving the 2nd drive connected this time, hoping that would somehow fix it. Nope.

So is there ANY way to fix this? My BIOS recognizes that the disc is there, as does windows...it's just telling me it's in RAW right now, and I have no clue how that happened. Oddly enough I even made an UBUNTU disc and booted to that...but from UBUNTU that 2nd drive doesn't even show up, it only recognizes the existence of my primary hard drive.

 

[gregrocker]

Boot free Partition Wizard bootable CD which gives even more reliable readings than Disk Mgmt.
Free Download Magic Partition Manager Software - Partition Wizard Online

You can use the Partition Recovery Wizard to see if you can rescue the partition if it doesn't show up to explore.

IF this fails, I'd boot free Paragon Rescue CD to try it's Partition Rescue function, then try to Rescue Data. Rescue Kit Free Edition | PARAGON Software Group - free partition software, hard disk partitioning

As a last resort, use free Recuva Data Recovery which can try to piece it back together after deletion: Recuva - Features

 

[Accipiter]

thanks! It does show up in the list of drives, I just can't explore it, as you said

 

[SIW2]

Install PW on 7.

Try a partition recovery - quick scan the HD.

If it finds the partition in NTFS format - select it, OK , Apply

 

[Accipiter]

OK guys, update...I tried Partition Wizard...when I would select the disc in question in the recovery wizard, it wouldn't let me select 'next', so that was a dead end. Both with the program, and using the bootable cd. Next I tried something called Get Data Back, which found an NTFS partition on the drive, but when I got to the screen that should have listed all my files to recover...it was blank. I tried Paragon next and similarly it did nothing. So I gave Recuva Data a try...and here's where it gets interesting, when I select the drive in question, at the bottom of the screen it says "Unable to read boot sector". Could that be causing the issue??

 

[gregrocker]

RAW normally means the data is gone. I don't believe restoring the boot sector is an option if it wasn't a bootable disk.

 

[SIW2]

How many partitions were on the 2nd HD ? ( doesn't matter if it's external or internal for this)

 

[Accipiter]

just the one partition

 

[SIW2]

Try the system rescue cd. Screenshots - SystemRescueCd

If it picks the drive up as raw - see if testdisk can recover your files

 

[stve]

Try connecting the hard drive to a different PC to recover the files.

 

[Accipiter]

Try connecting the hard drive to a different PC to recover the files.

but if it's in RAW format wouldn't that prevent me from getting at them still?

I really need this stuff back. My house got broken into very recently and this computer was left, unfortunately all my backups were stolen. I'd lose all my correspondence from my parents growing up, old journals, photos, videos from my childhood.

 

[gregrocker]

Focus on SIW2's recommendations.

Ask him the questions you need to proceed as he suggests.

 

[SIW2]

It is likely the filesystem is still intact - in that case you should be able to recover data.

If sys resc cd picks up the drive as raw - then test disk may be able to recover your files .

TestDisk: undelete file for NTFS - CGSecurity


http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_Recovery_Examples

 

[Accipiter]

ok, I'll give that a shot when I get home...the system rescue CD you were speaking of before is the one W7 helps you create I assume

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

ok, I'll give that a shot when I get home...the system rescue CD you were speaking of before is the one W7 helps you create I assume

Have a look at post #9 in this same thread.

 

[SIW2]

In case you missed BFK's post.

The system rescue is not the one you run of from within windows - it is here:

Screenshots - SystemRescueCd

 

[Accipiter]

In case you missed BFK's post.

The system rescue is not the one you run of from within windows - it is here:

Screenshots - SystemRescueCd

boy am I a dummy. I thought he had hosted a few pictures for my benefit and posted them in this thread lol. Didn't see the beginning of that URL.

 

[SIW2]

See if test disk can recover the partition first - if not, try the file recovery.

Recovery of a lost and damaged NTFS Data Recovery Examples - CGSecurity

 

[steve-pressman]

This is an excellent tool for data recovery you might want to give it ago works for me every time. It is free for home use.

Free File Recovery Software - Power Data Recovery is an all-in-one free data recovery software that could help you to recover your lost data from hard disk, CD, DVD disk, memory stick, memory card, and flash drive.


Steve

 

[Accipiter]

ok, so I ran testdisk, the weird thing was after I selected the partition, instead of it coming up as NTFS I had to scroll through a list of like 75 different format types, only one even had NTFS in the name, I selected that one, and when I went to undelete it told me it couldnt do anything and that the file system appeared to be damaged