External Hard Drive not detected

MihirShah · 06 Apr 2015

External Hard drive (of 2 TB) was connected to my Laptop (Running Windows 7 Home Premium).

System was shut down abruptly (I guess something was being read/write from the external HDD). I tried restarting (with the external HDD connected) and the system would not proceed from the "Windows is Shutting Down" screen. As soon as I remove the external HDD cable the system shut downs and restarts. When the Operating system is up, I connect the external HDD but cannot see the external HDD drive.

I did a restart again, but no luck.

When I open 'Disk Management' it asks me to Initialize the drive. I am not willing to loose the data on it. (data is approx of 600 GB).

Files that I have in are .vmdk images, .iso files & Executable files. There are hardly any media/photo files. (I am concerned about the executable's.)

I have attached screenshot from 'Disk Management' view.

comptech · 07 Apr 2015

Do you have drivers for your external HDD?...
Did you HDD recognize in other computers?

MihirShah · 07 Apr 2015

Yes, I have drivers.

It's not recognized on other computer as well. I even tried changing the cable.

RolandJS · 07 Apr 2015

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+...F-8&gws_rd=ssl

I'm not sure, however, Google appears to have some potentially-promising solution[s], or, not.

How to format an hard drive without losing the file - Hard Drives - Storage
[from a poster] January 14, 2013 3:44:44 AM
You should try a drive recovery freeware that has helped me recover many of my files from a "not formatted" drive and format this drive to return its normal use afterwards.
Note:
1. Do not store any new data on this drive to avoid the original data overwritten by new data, which can make it gone forever.
2. Do not save the recovered data on the same drive in case of recovery failure.
3. Do not forget to format this drive after recovery failure.
4. Do not forget to back up your important data regularly on a different drive in the future.

Tomshardware forums have several threads covering this topic. One poster in another thread indicated:
if HD is formatted, recovery will be very difficult at best

Roland

whs · 07 Apr 2015

Can you get to the drive with a live Linux CD.

MihirShah · 07 Apr 2015

RolandJS said:

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+...F-8&gws_rd=ssl

I'm not sure, however, Google appears to have some potentially-promising solution[s], or, not.

How to format an hard drive without losing the file - Hard Drives - Storage
[from a poster] January 14, 2013 3:44:44 AM
You should try a drive recovery freeware that has helped me recover many of my files from a "not formatted" drive and format this drive to return its normal use afterwards.
Note:
1. Do not store any new data on this drive to avoid the original data overwritten by new data, which can make it gone forever.
2. Do not save the recovered data on the same drive in case of recovery failure.
3. Do not forget to format this drive after recovery failure.
4. Do not forget to back up your important data regularly on a different drive in the future.

Tomshardware forums have several threads covering this topic. One poster in another thread indicated:
if HD is formatted, recovery will be very difficult at best

Roland

I've tried all of those showing on page 1. None worked for me. It is asking me to initialize the disk. As I had mentioned earlier, I can see the disk in "Disk Management" as 'Not Initialized' and I guess because of this non of the third party Software's are able to detect the disk when I run them.

One two of them were able to detect, but I was not able to proceed further. After it detects, there is no action for me to do, I cannot proceed for scanning and eventually close the program.

MihirShah · 07 Apr 2015

whs said:

Can you get to the drive with a live Linux CD.

I haven't tried this option. Can you tell me a good source from where I can get this.

whs · 07 Apr 2015

https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorial...linux-live-cds

But you can also use this:

Emergency Kit - save your files from a dead OS