WD laptop HDD not loading

jumanji said:

It went back to the previous state. Run bootice and repeat what we had done. If after the operation we could get back the drive showing three RAW partitions in Windows Disk Management, we shall close Windows Disk Management, plug in your destination external drive and start TestDisk.

Keeps giving this message, even yesterday I got this message...plugged off and on couple of times to make it work...

Shall I plug it off or restart my system and see if that works?

Yes, try it. If you get back bootice to read the sector well and good. Now what this means is sector 0 is readable sometimes and unreadable sometimes. If we can't get it back to the readable state as happened yesterday, we may not be able to do anything.

jumanji said:

Yes, try it. If you get back bootice to read the sector well and good. Now what this means is sector 0 is readable sometimes and unreadable sometimes. If we can't get it back to the readable state as happened yesterday, we may not be able to do anything.

Yes, I understand. I am trying it but no luck as of now...keep you posted if I get through

The sector doesn't show 42 as it was before. It shows 07 so it did save the change...anything else I can do to make it work?

If it is not dragging your system down, you can try a direct connection on your desktop.But always have TestDisk ready and another external plugged in. We had already input 07 into the relevant fields and it has been saved/stored. So if it reads, you should see the three RAW partitions.

Whenever you are able to see the drive with 3 RAW partitions, run testDisk as per the screenshots in this post #6 here WD Elements being read as RAW // Contents readable through app When you reach the fifth screen showing the three partitions, select the desired partition, move the highlight from [Boot] to
[List] and press enter to list the files. Copy the files to the destination drive.

Read this on How to copy the files first before you run TestDisk.

My post#28 here My external hard drive suddenly became unllocated:

Screenshot 5 onwards is what you will do.

So now you have to bank upon your stars hoping your drive to become readable. The other alternative is Professional data Recovery. Contact WD data recovery partners http://support.wdc.com/warranty/datarecovery.aspx?lang=en Telephonic consultation is free to obtain a quote.

I have read many cases where changing from 42 to 07 to bring a dynamic drive to basic to resolve the invalid disk problem but in all those cases the drive was good.

Good Luck.

Keep my above post in reserve :).

Do not do anything now. Let me see the bootice screen and analyse it. Do not close bootice.

You still have bootice on? Are you listening to my post?

jumanji said:

Keep my above post in reserve :).

Do not do anything now. Let me see the bootice screen and analyse it. Do not close bootice.

oops...sorry I closed it before I saw this post. But hdd was anyways in hung state...am trying again to get the hdd to get detected

prashantsbhatia said:

oops...sorry I closed it before I saw this post. But hdd was anyways in hung state...am trying again to get the hdd to get detected

Below is what shows up in partition manager but testdisk is trying to detect it...not showing up anything there...

Never mind. We are now dealing with an intermittent drive and banking on good luck. We can't expect everything to go by the rule book.

May be you need to shut down your PC, remove the drive, reboot, plugin your drive and retry. If in Windows Disk Management it shows up as three RAW partitions close WDM ,start TestDisk.And hold there.

I shall be back in about 15 minutes to ascertain the position.