Disk unallocated, unable to initialise, unable to assign drive letter

When I used the PW, I saw some of my files in the recovered NTFS partition, but as I stated before, after recovering, I assigned a drive letter, and then I stopped there. I will try PW again as soon as I resume office. As of now, the DPR is still running at 28% and it's almost closing time.

Anyway, do I have to run PW again to scan the disk or can I just go the part where the recovery has finished and see what I can do from there? Is that possible? or re-scan?

OK, if you want to recover the files, your best bet would be to run PhotoRec. No guarantee since the drive has already been manipulated in many ways.

Since you won't be able to do it in your office ( the scan will take a long time), get the HDD back into your brother's laptop and run PhotoRec from a bootable USB drive. Use the DOS version of TestDisk to create your bootable pendrive with Rufus. http://rufus.akeo.ie/

Guide to using PhotoRec recovery software.

jumanji said:

melo7ultimate said:

jumanji said:

OK, Now run Partition Wizard and post a screenshot of how the drive looks in Partition Wizard.

Then run a quick scan with Partition Recovery Wizard in Partition Wizard. ( Follow the topic Recovery with Partition Wizard: SanDisk Cruzer Blade 16GB - in your case it will be your problem HDD ) in Recover a flash drive turned RAW – Partition Wizard and TestDisk.

After quick scan is completed, does it show the partitions found? Select the partition/partitions shown and double click on them. Does the Partition Explorer show the files? Please post the screenshots as in my thread above.

Edit: I missed your post#3. What is that HDD Reader? Ideally, I would have preferred recovery with the drive in its original location - the laptop.

Anyway, let us see what PW shows.

I detached the HDD from laptop because it doesn't boot, and when I tried to format with installation CD, it won't create a new partition from the unallocated disk space, therefore, it won't proceed to formatting the drive.

So I detached the HDD, hooked it to the reader, plugged the reader in another laptop and view it as an external drive but it doesn't show in My Computer and as shown on the screen shot I posted on its status in the Disk Management

So your aim is to format the drive and not data recovery. Yes /No

Put the HDD back into laptop and from the installation DVD run diskpart clean all. Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Once the clean all completes, reinstall Windows formatting the drive.

Already did that. The clean command is successful, but I believe I still need to use assign command to give it a drive letter and it gives an error when I use the assign command.

Sir Jumanji, if I proceed to formatting and disregard data recovery. What steps should I follow? BTW, thanks a lot for attending to my concerns. I'm too busy thinking of remedies that I even forgot to thank you..so THANK YOU AGAIN SIR

melo7ultimate said:

jumanji said:

melo7ultimate said:

I detached the HDD from laptop because it doesn't boot, and when I tried to format with installation CD, it won't create a new partition from the unallocated disk space, therefore, it won't proceed to formatting the drive.

So I detached the HDD, hooked it to the reader, plugged the reader in another laptop and view it as an external drive but it doesn't show in My Computer and as shown on the screen shot I posted on its status in the Disk Management

So your aim is to format the drive and not data recovery. Yes /No

Put the HDD back into laptop and from the installation DVD run diskpart clean all. Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Once the clean all completes, reinstall Windows formatting the drive.

Already did that. The clean command is successful, but I believe I still need to use assign command to give it a drive letter and it gives an error when I use the assign command.

Not just clean (which only zeroes the first sector of the HDD) but clean all which zeroes all sectors.

BTW, what make is the HDD? if it is Seagate or Western Digital you can also run the manufacturer's diagnostic/repair utility from a bootable pen drive to check the disk's health. If it passes the short test and long test, by using the same utility you can wipe the disk clean - write zeroes.

Now you have been given all options. It is upto you to do whatever you like.:)

melo7ultimate said:

When I try to close the PW, it says "You are about to quit the program and cancel all pending operations. The changes you have made will be lost."

When you use Partition Wizard there are 2 steps to the process:
1) You start the chosen task, make your change, and say OK.
The task will now appear in the left of the window in the "Pending Operations" column.

2) You then must click on the "APPLY" button at the bottom left corner to start making the changes.

When you get that message in the quote above it means that you quit the program before applying the changes, so nothing was changed.

^ I also thought it could be as simple as that. His earlier post indicated that he might not have clicked on APPLY.

Reason why I wanted him to run PW again so that we can get on to it.

But the OP had diverted into MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition.

And also in a later post he tells "When I D-click the NTFS file, it only shows the USER Folder, no WINDOWS folder. But still, I followed the instructions until the "change drive letter", and changed it to drive G:\. PW says it's successful but when I clicked Apply and waited for it to finish, windows reported the program stopped working and needs to close.."

The OP does not seem to have a fixed goal as to what exactly he wants to do whether Recovery or format. He was also coming out with the history in bits and pieces. So in the end there was no other option except to suggest all means for data recovery and format and let him choose what he wants to do and give up tutoring..:) ( unless he comes out for any specific help while carrying out any process)

I missed that. I read the first post and then skimmed to see if anyone addressed it. I guess I skimmed too fast!
Maybe it will help others though.

jumanji said:

melo7ultimate said:

jumanji said:

So your aim is to format the drive and not data recovery. Yes /No

Put the HDD back into laptop and from the installation DVD run diskpart clean all. Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Once the clean all completes, reinstall Windows formatting the drive.

Already did that. The clean command is successful, but I believe I still need to use assign command to give it a drive letter and it gives an error when I use the assign command.

Not just clean (which only zeroes the first sector of the HDD) but clean all which zeroes all sectors.

BTW, what make is the HDD? if it is Seagate or Western Digital you can also run the manufacturer's diagnostic/repair utility from a bootable pen drive to check the disk's health. If it passes the short test and long test, by using the same utility you can wipe the disk clean - write zeroes.

Now you have been given all options. It is upto you to do whatever you like.:)

Good day from here sir:

I tried both options. First, I put HDD back into the laptop and used installation CD to run clean all, BUT there's an error and it cleaning was unsuccessful..

I went to WD website (HDD make), and downloaded utility repair tool. Tried all options in there until my last option, to write zeroes on all sectors, BUT AGAIN, it says "Error. Unable to write zeroes..Continue?" << this message box keeps popping on hundreds of sectors until eventually done BUT not fixed.

So I tried PW again and retried the recovery, BUT it got worse. It is now a Bad Disk w/c it wasn't before. Does this mean I need to buy a new HDD? It still shows in Disk Management though.