Oh boy. Please tell me I can save this drive. USB to SATA nightmare.

gregrocker said:

If the data on the HD is not readable when connected via SATA then it still seems like you may be bumping up against most modern PC's inability to read 3gb HD's - the reason why EFI BIOS are coming online now.

It's possible Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard can recover the partition however it is mostly an undelete function when the partition is deleted, not when it's not seen.

If not then if the PW Home Version sees the HD it can sometimes make it readable by running Check File System on the partition. This normally works when the file system is awry.

Check File System is not an available option for me when the 3tb disk is selected.



I wonder if I hooked it back up to the enclosure and made 2 partitions then hooked it back up to SATA if that would work.

Found this. BUMMER. There has to be a way around this. I don't have any place to temporarily move the 1tb of data that is on this!!!

Slickdeals.net - View Single Post - USB 3.0 WD 3TB External Hard Drive at Staples for $120 AC with tax/ possible $115 with tax in store only


Quote from BartenderCK :
Anyone know the drives inside?
it is the green drive. i bought one few days ago and opened it to confirm the drive.

if you plan to use it internally, you have to re-assign partitions which means you will loose everything you stored on it when it was inside the enclosure. you have to do the same when put it back into the enclosure before use it as an external drive.

What kind of SATA adapter is that?

Yes, I think you'll have a better chance of it being seen if you shrink the existing partition to create a second one. I think I would back up the data too to another HD, external or the cloud.
Partition or Volume - Shrink
Partition or Volume - Create New
Partition Wizard Resize Partition Video Help.

The reason I said you need PW Home version is because to run Check File System it needs to be assigned a letter and that will only be in the installed version. PW Boot disk does not recognize drive letters because they are different in WinRE anyway.

gregrocker said:

Yes, I think you'll have a better chance of it being seen if you shrink the existing partition to create a second one. I think I would back up the data too to another HD, external or the cloud.
Partition or Volume - Shrink
Partition or Volume - Create New
Partition Wizard Resize Partition Video Help.

The reason I said you need PW Home version is because to run Check File System it needs to be assigned a letter and that will only be in the installed version. PW Boot disk does not recognize drive letters because they are different in WinRE anyway.

I am running the installed version of PW Home. See my earlier screenshot. The problem is that when selecting the 3tb disc, this Check File System option doesn't show. If I select any if the other discs on my system, this option does show.

I will hook it back up to the external controller and see if that works although I highly doubt it.

It would be good to check the File System if it's possible via USB. Try before and after splitting the partition in two.

I split the disk in half into two NTFS partitions using the external USB controller.

It still shows the full 3TB as an unallocated disk when I put it back plugged into the mobo SATA.

Bios info attached.

I'm running the PW Recovery Wizard again overnight and if that doesn't work, i'm off to buy another 3TB disk tomorrow so I have something to back this all up to.

Thanks for your continued support on this.

Can you check the File System for both partitions when it's attached via USB?