Unallocated drive, partition recovered but not recognized

Greetings! Thanks in advance for your help. I'm stumped. Jumanji or Brink, I'm hoping you can help.

I'm an IT professional, and am usually pretty good at resolving my computer issues, but I haven't been able to fix this one. I use Centos 5 at work, Centos 6 on a home server and am comfortable using command prompts in Windows. I use Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on most of my home machines.

I have a 3Tb external Hitachi drive, which was formatted as GPT. It contains a lot of hard to replace media files.

My system lost power while Windows was booting and the drives in the external cases were spinning up. Now when I open Disk Management, I get the dreaded "You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it" message. I know better than to let it initialize and format my drive! I hit "Cancel", and the drive shows as "Not Initialized" "Unallocated".

Following Jumanji's excellent instructions, I am using Partition Wizard Pro v8.1.1 and have tried 3 times to recover the partition and assign a drive letter. Partition Wizard sees the full partition, and when I explore it, the files appear to be intact and readable. So it looks like I'll be able to recover the partition.

Next I choose both partitions on the 3Tb drive (the main one and the 128Mb stub that Windows requires) assign a drive letter to the main partition and click "Apply". Then Partition Wizard says "Updating partition information" and "Apply all the pending changes successfully".

It looks like the partition was recovered.

But when I go back into Disk Management and rescan the disks, the drive still shows as "Not Initialized" "Unallocated". I've tried rebooting my system.... the drive still shows as "Not Initialized" "Unallocated".

If I must, I will use a data recovery program to try to pull off the data. But since Partition Wizard can see the partition, it seems to me that it must be possible to fix whatever got corrupted and is making the disk unreadable to Windows.

Many thanks for your time and expertise,

April

Do not panic.

Your data is still there and we shall attempt to recover your drive as it is. If not possible then only we shall employ Test Disk and copy the data to another external drive. Do not attempt any other software in haste.

Please use Windows 7 PC and post a full screenshot of how your 3TB external drive looks in PW now.

Since you are in the IT field read this at your leisure:

Benefits of GPT vs MBR Primary and MBR Logical Partitions ?

Good to hear from you Jumanji.

I haven't touched the drive since I started the post, knowing that trying the wrong "fix" could cost me my data!

This is what the drive currently looks like in PW. The partition I'm trying to recover is StM_Movies_00_-_Ez.

Many thanks!

Kaktussoft, thanks for your help

Just to be sure, I tried assigning a drive letter in Partition Wizard again. I get this message "Apply all the pending changes successfully" after I click "Apply".

Then I go back into Windows Disk Management, and the drive still shows as "Not Initialized" "Unallocated". This is the case even after I reboot my system.

Many thanks,

April

Kaktussoft,


Sadly, no. I have tried assigning a drive letter in PW several times, and each time, it does not show a drive letter assigned to the recovered partition. I have tried restarting PW and rebooting my machine, then trying again. It's as if something in my MBR or boot partition is refusing to accept the updated partition information.

The attached screenshot is what the partitions currently look like in PW. As you can see, the two healthy disks (C: and D: ) have assigned drive letters. The partition I'm trying to recover shows * where the drive letter should be.

Again, I appreciate your help

April

Helps if I attach the screenshot!

Yes. What drive letter did you assign in PW? After you did "Apply", did PW show the drive with that drive letter? OK, I am late. May be PW itself did not take the drive letter.Right?

Jumanji and Kaktussoft,

I assigned drive letter "U:", but PW shows it as "*:StM_Movies_00_-_Ez". So apparently the drive assignment didn't stick.

Thanks again for your time and expertise,

April