WD USB hard drive showing as local disk

[thomaadam]

I plugged my WD "my passport" 5oogb hard drive into USB yesterday and it showed up as local disk on my computer with 0Gb used and 0Gb available. In disk manager it shows up as 500GB WD harddrive but in RAW format with 1 partition in use.I cannot carry out disk checkker as windows cannot access hard drive. I have tried using minitool data recovery and it shows as no disk recognised please insert disk. I carried out testdisk and it could not find any partitions on it. When i plug it into windows i hear the connection beep and the hard drive power light continually flashes, the hard drive is spinning as can feel it and no clicking on other noises heard. I have tried changing drive name on disk manager made no effect. When i try to run CHKDSK through DOS it says system cannot find the file specified. Please help as i have all my son pictures from birth to now which is 6 years on it and no other copies of them

 

[thomaadam]

some screen shots from what i have tried so far

hopefully these will give some more info of problems

 

[nav197707]

Have u tried opening windows cmd prompt admin mode (right click). I had same problem and managed to fix it in half an hour.
Looks like the partition table is damaged. Normaly during power cut or sudden removal of device.

 

[patio]

RAW on external HDD's normally mean it's been disconnected improperly 1 too many times...
Partition Recovery software may do the trick but none of the good ones are Free...

 

[thomaadam]

semi solved

It appears for what ever reason the hard drive is now being recognized by my laptop and all files ar visible for the time being, I am currently moving everything from the hard drive to save as much as possible. The removal issues both replies raised could be possible the last time it worked I shut down laptop and forced the shutdown of my computer to enable laptop to complete shut down maybe this is what has caused it. NAV197707 i dont know what cmd prompt admin mode is so no I havent tried that(if you dont mind explaining it to me i would happily try it. The issue I now have is mega super sow transfer rate on USB currently getting between 40Kb/s and maximum of 600Kb/s so copying the 365Gb of data is gonna take a very long time any ideas on this would be grateful appreciated.

 

[nav197707]

To run cmd in admin mode here is the link, Start a Command Prompt as an Administrator. after the box appears write down chkdsk e: (or what ever your drive name is. That will show any errors in the drive, if bad sectors are shown type chkdsk e: /f
Let me know how u get on. This solution worked for me as I had a similar problem as yours

 

[benito93]

I am having the exact same probleme!

Why did your Hard drive was recognized after? do i need to wait? how long?

 

[nav197707]

you don't need to wait long 30 min approx.
all my files were there. try my solution tell me if it works.

 

[benito93]

Okay.

So when i enter the command "chkdsk e: " (my hard drive appear under disk e: aswell), i press enter. and i wait.

It does not do anything.... Is this normal? sorry it is like the first time, im using the command prompt

 

[nav197707]

should do something when you press enter, try chkdsk c: to see if anything happens then try chkdsk e: and enter later

 

[benito93]

The chkdsk c: give me this message "the type of file is NTFS" so i guess it worked.

I retryed it, and it give me the same thing.....

 

[nav197707]

C:\Documents and Settings\mpos>chkdsk c:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

156280288 KB total disk space.
12116176 KB in 34467 files.
11304 KB in 4337 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
110084 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
144042724 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
39070072 total allocation units on disk.
36010681 allocation units available on disk.

C:\Documents and Settings\mpos>

THIS IS WHAT I GET WHEN I TYPE IT IN. WAIT A FEW MINUTES WHEN U TYPE CHKDSK E:OR TYPE IN
TYPE IN CHKDSK E: /F

 

[madcratebuilder]

RAW on external HDD's normally mean it's been disconnected improperly 1 too many times...
Partition Recovery software may do the trick but none of the good ones are Free...

Partition Wizard and Gparted both have very good partition recover options and both are free open source software. Both can be installed to drive or run as a livecd.

 

[JustinK]

i plugged my wd "my passport" 5oogb hard drive into usb yesterday and it showed up as local disk on my computer with 0gb used and 0gb available. In disk manager it shows up as 500gb wd harddrive but in raw format with 1 partition in use.i cannot carry out disk checkker as windows cannot access hard drive. I have tried using minitool data recovery and it shows as no disk recognised please insert disk. I carried out testdisk and it could not find any partitions on it. When i plug it into windows i hear the connection beep and the hard drive power light continually flashes, the hard drive is spinning as can feel it and no clicking on other noises heard. I have tried changing drive name on disk manager made no effect. When i try to run chkdsk through dos it says system cannot find the file specified. Please help as i have all my son pictures from birth to now which is 6 years on it and no other copies of them

help me please

 

[JustinK]

I have same problem now!

HELP ME PLEASE! did you resolve your problem?

 

[nurh]

I plugged my WD "my passport" 5oogb hard drive into USB yesterday and it showed up as local disk on my computer with 0Gb used and 0Gb available. In disk manager it shows up as 500GB WD harddrive but in RAW format with 1 partition in use.I cannot carry out disk checkker as windows cannot access hard drive. I have tried using minitool data recovery and it shows as no disk recognised please insert disk. I carried out testdisk and it could not find any partitions on it. When i plug it into windows i hear the connection beep and the hard drive power light continually flashes, the hard drive is spinning as can feel it and no clicking on other noises heard. I have tried changing drive name on disk manager made no effect. When i try to run CHKDSK through DOS it says system cannot find the file specified. Please help as i have all my son pictures from birth to now which is 6 years on it and no other copies of them

Same same samee.. Please tell me if you managed to rescue your photos and how did you do it?
I still cannot detect my external hard disk after doing a forced shut as well.

 

[Megahertz07]

With your disk connected, open disk management and expand the window and columns so we can read them.
With the sniping tool, take a snapshot of all window and save to your computer.
Use the paper clip on the reply window, top left - Browse to the file - upload.