Bad drive? Fun with Disk Management

[justaguy]

OK, so.

I just realized I have an external drive that's not hooked up. Been sitting there for I don't know how long. I just completely lost track of how many drives I used to have hooked up. Supposed to be 9, only been showing 8 for a long time.

So I plug it in. 7 gives me the "hardware attached" sound, but nothing happens in Explorer. Shows up in Device Manager. Does show up in Disk Management, but won't let me do anything to it. Cannot initialize, can't go online with it, can't change the drive letter, just says "Disk 8, Unknown, Not Initialized".

Reboot, went into BIOS. Also shows up there.

I'm guessing it's kaput? I know there must have been stuff on there, but it's been so long I can't even remember what it was. TV shows? Movies? Music? Nuclear secrets? The formula for the Higgs Boson?

Have tried 2 cables, one of which is brand new (USB 3, with the Micro B end on it) in both USB 2 and USB 3 ports.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Have you tried DISKPART Guy it should show up in there. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html
go to point 4 and see what there is.

 

[justaguy]

Here's what I find using DiskPart.

That "Clean" command worries me...is that the only option there is? Other than data recovery?

 

[msalton1]

If it's USB, try a different USB port. Also try a new cable (is it in a dock? Is it connected directly to the USB port on the motherboard (ie, not a monitor hub, usb hub, etc.).

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Guy another thing you can try is make a bootable Ubuntu disk set the BIOS to boot from the optical when it loads go to the TRY not the Install and use TRY when it is fully loaded it will show all drives connected to the machine click on them and open them it doesn't rely on Windows so you should be able to "see" what is on / in the drive/s.
It doesn't take long and you can use whatever burning software you like I use ImgBurn for my stuff like that. The Official ImgBurn Website
I use this for drives that cannot be accessed for whatever reason and it just takes a bit of digging down if you get into any problems post back.

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