Hard drive unaccessible

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
B

baylok747

Honorable
Apr 23, 2013
3
0
10,510
Had a hard drive (Samsung HD501-LJ) that I had in my PC. "Upgraded" from Win Vista to Win 8. Started having issues with Win 8, and threw in the towel when an upgrade messed things up to cause me to do a restore. After the restore, apps were missing, most of the icons from the Metro page were missing, and some like App store and Settings no longer worked.

Took the hard drive out and put in a new SSD, and installed a new vewsion of Windows 7. That went fine.

I put the old hard drive back in the PC, but when I click on it, I get a message saying the drive is not accessible. What can I do to make the old drive accessible?
 
Solution
John_VanKirk
Now I understand the picture. Your Disk Management image is truly worth a thousand words!
Yes, Disc0 is your SSD, with the MS reserved 100Mb partition first, then your C: system drive volume taking up the remainder of the disk.

The piece that doesn't fit together, is that Disk1 (Samsung HD501?) is properly recognized by Disk Management, is a 500GB disk set up as a Basic Drive, with the standard MBR 4 Partition structure, with 2 Partitions, that are both healthy. They both have a "friendly name" and a drive letter assignment. The Blue Band above them means they are Primary Partitions.
I am assuming the HP 475GB NTFS partition had your Win-8 OS on it, along with data, and the Factory Image Partition is the HP Restore Partition, which was...
Sort by date Sort by votes
John_VanKirk

John_VanKirk

Distinguished
Jan 28, 2010
1,742
0
20,160
Hi there,
With all your drives connected, including the one that says inaccessible, could you please upload a screenshot of your Disk Management dialog box (My Computer, Manage, Computer Management, Disk Management) - use photobucket or imageshack if unclear how to do that - so we can see exactly how your computer is recognizing these drives, and if there is any reasonable easy way to get your drive going again.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

baylok747

Honorable
Apr 23, 2013
3
0
10,510

Thanks John. Having a bit of difficulty posting the pic, but it is located here:
http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a602/baylok747/ScreenShot001_zpsd5793f0b.gif
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
John_VanKirk

John_VanKirk

Distinguished
Jan 28, 2010
1,742
0
20,160
Don't see the Samsung recognized, just as you said.
Next go to Device Manager, to see if the Samsung HD501 is listed there. Also reboot, and on the startup screen, go to the BIOS page that shows the hardware devices listed to see if it recognized by the firmware. If it's not recognized either place, then it truly is a failed HDD requiring replacement.
If present, post back.

Two other quick items: What is the Samsung Device listed as a CD/DVD device, but described as an SSD device, at the bottom of your image? Possibly something I'm not aware of, or mislabeled.
In Photobucket, to paste an image to a post, click on the Gear Icon, to get links, then choose the IMG one, not the thumbnail. Click on it and it will copy the url to the clipboard, then just past it in your post and voila! it's here. The method you used is just fine - but nice to know how to place it directly in the post also.

Let us know what you find!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

baylok747

Honorable
Apr 23, 2013
3
0
10,510


Will do. Out of town on business so it may be a day or two before I get back to the PC. From the pic, Disc0 is the new ssd. Disc1 if the problem drive. I did check the bios the first time I booted after re-installing the HD501, and it was recognized in the BIOS.

I had the ssd CD in my dvd drive. It looks like Disk Manager reported the label from the CD.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
John_VanKirk

John_VanKirk

Distinguished
Jan 28, 2010
1,742
0
20,160
Now I understand the picture. Your Disk Management image is truly worth a thousand words!
Yes, Disc0 is your SSD, with the MS reserved 100Mb partition first, then your C: system drive volume taking up the remainder of the disk.

The piece that doesn't fit together, is that Disk1 (Samsung HD501?) is properly recognized by Disk Management, is a 500GB disk set up as a Basic Drive, with the standard MBR 4 Partition structure, with 2 Partitions, that are both healthy. They both have a "friendly name" and a drive letter assignment. The Blue Band above them means they are Primary Partitions.
I am assuming the HP 475GB NTFS partition had your Win-8 OS on it, along with data, and the Factory Image Partition is the HP Restore Partition, which was used by clicking a special key combination, to restore the first Partition back to the Vista Factory New configuration.

All depends on what you want to do with the older HDD. Theoretically you should be able to check the file structure of Drive E:, and if intact, copy over personal data that may be on the drive. If the file structure has been corrupted by the upgrade or restore, you could download one of the data recovery applications (Aeseus Data Recovery Wizard - home edition freeware) or (TenorShare Data Recovery - free 30 fay trial) to copy off your data. Usually the 1st GB is free but need to buy the product for more data. Here are the websites:
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/
http://www.any-data-recovery.com/product/

If you just want to use the old HDD as a secondary drive for data storage, in Disk Management you should be able to right click on each of the Disk1 volumes, to delete them separately, then reformat the drive with NTFS (standard allocation units) into 1 or more separate Primary volumes. Since it is listed as having healthy volumes, there should be no problem. Remember when you delete a disk volume, or reformat a disk, you lose all data on the drive. If you do a Full Format, it will take a while but check all the sectors on the drive and mark out any bad sectors if any.
hope that's helpful
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
John_VanKirk

John_VanKirk

Distinguished
Jan 28, 2010
1,742
0
20,160

Hi Ariel,
When you have Disk Management report RAW data, that means there is no File System installed on the Drive, or the File system has become corrupted. The drive under discussion here, if you look at the Disk Management Dialog Box post, has NTFS installed properly on both Volumes, and the Volumes are reported as Healthy. In all likelihood, data has become corrupted, not the File System, and a standard Data Recovery Application as mentioned, is the logical way to start.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom