WD 2TB EXTERNAL HD. Lost data - Needs to be initialised

charlieat101

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Apr 11, 2013
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I have a 2tb WD Elements USB HDD. For whatever reason (I suspect because I didn't use the remove safeley option), it is only visiable in Disk Management with data no accessable unless I initialise the drive. I dont want to do this because I'll loose all the data on it. I think form reading numerous forums I have a corupt MBR - does anyone know how I can repair the MBR? I've tried running it on linux, but can't be seen either. Any assitrance greatly appreaciated. Rgds, Charlie
 

drifter77

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Nov 25, 2012
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When you open Computer, does it show in the list of drives or only on Disk Management? Your problem could be the corrupt MBR or something else. Try EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional, this program has saved many failed hard drives / drive needs to be formatted ..etc.

The wizard will scan all your drives / partitions and attempt recovery. Note that for a 2TB drive it might take up to 48 hrs to recover your data. See if it works.
 

casper1973

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Dec 30, 2012
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The problem I can see you having with EaseUS (and most data recovery software) is the drive will not even be recognised. It only display drives which have been mounted and assigned a drive letter. This wont happen with your drive because Windows doesn't even consider it initialised.

The data is likely still on there but the partition table is missing/damaged. Think of the partition table as a map telling your OS where all the data is stored. Without it your OS is clueless.

If you have a linux distro running (or even a live disk) I would highly recommend using TestDisk. It's a complex program and entirely terminal based so I can't explain it in a few posts and you are going to have to do some research. It can however analyse the disk for partitions and rebuild your MBR accordingly along with fixing many other errors. If it fails to fix the drive then it also has a very powerful data recovery suite included called PhotoRec.

The good thing is it will work even if your drive fails to mount.

Here is a good starting guide - http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-repair-a-damaged-partition-table-or-mbr/
 

charlieat101

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Apr 11, 2013
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Thanks for this. I tried the tool, with no success. No partition found. It's strange, because I can see it under disk management. I have used numerous tools including AOMEI Partition Assistant and a demo of vimx partition recovery to attempt to repair the MBR. No joy. I think because the disk isn't initialised thorugh windows, nonen of the apps can see it.
 

charlieat101

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Apr 11, 2013
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Thanks casper1973. I think you are right, I've run this tool and others and whilst it can see the drive, after 18 hours of scanning it finds and can recover nothing. I've ran Testdisk in Windows (Ubuntu can't see the device disk) and I get a 'read error' message. I think the only option left is is to inititilize the disk, making sure not to put and new data on it. Then use something like FDK Imager to image the newly formatted disk and then recover the data forensically.

11 April 2013 19:19:29