Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

Unallocated space? How?

Tags:
  • Western Digital
  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
  • External Hard Drive
Last response: in Storage
Share
October 12, 2014 11:19:58 AM

A few years ago my wife and I bought an external HDD by Western Digital (1TB). After a while we decided to take it out of the casing and just use it as an internal HDD. Things were running fine for the next few years and within the last six months I acquired another HDD. To plug this drive in, I had to unplug the old external from the board (I didn't need it at the time). The computer stayed like this for about a year. The other day I needed to access some files from the old unplugged drive so I plugged it back into my system. I checked my BIOS, fine. I started windows and proceeded to look for the drive but I found nothing. I saw that some plug n play drivers were being installed regarding the HDD. When I went to check in my device manager I saw that the drive is physically connected to the machine, ok good. The only problem is that under disk management is says that the space is unallocated, why is this? I've had this drive unplugged before but it's never acted like this. I even looked at my EASEUS Partition Master for some recovery options. It shows that its finding only about 400GB of my files from the drive (it was almost full). What's going on with this guys? I'd love to know lol

More about : unallocated space

a c 327 G Storage
October 12, 2014 12:37:20 PM

Could we see sector 0 in a disc editor, eg DMDE (freeware)? Select Mode -> Hexadecimal.
m
0
l
October 12, 2014 1:35:20 PM

fzabkar said:
Could we see sector 0 in a disc editor, eg DMDE (freeware)? Select Mode -> Hexadecimal.


I found the program and the Sector 0, but how do I show you? Do I post a screen shot or do I send you one some sort of log? Sorry, I've never had to do this before.
m
0
l
Related resources
a c 327 G Storage
October 12, 2014 1:49:14 PM

Tools -> Copy Sectors

In Source ...

Start Sector = 0
Number of Sectors = 1

In Destination ...

select File
you will offered a file name of "dev128_lba0_1.bin", or similar.

click Save

Answer Yes to "Do you wish to write ..."

Upload the BIN file to a file sharing service (you may need to ZIP it), or you could open it in a hex editor such as HxD (freeware).

In HxD ...

Edit -> Select All
Edit -> Copy As -> Editor View

Then paste the contents of the clipboard into your next post (Ctrl-V).
m
0
l
October 12, 2014 2:50:32 PM

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000 33 C0 8E D0 BC 00 7C 8E C0 8E D8 BE 00 7C BF 00 3ÀŽÐ¼.|ŽÀŽØ¾.|¿.
00000010 06 B9 00 02 FC F3 A4 50 68 1C 06 CB FB B9 04 00 .¹..üó¤Ph..Ëû¹..
00000020 BD BE 07 80 7E 00 00 7C 0B 0F 85 0E 01 83 C5 10 ½¾.€~..|..…..ƒÅ.
00000030 E2 F1 CD 18 88 56 00 55 C6 46 11 05 C6 46 10 00 âñÍ.ˆV.UÆF..ÆF..
00000040 B4 41 BB AA 55 CD 13 5D 72 0F 81 FB 55 AA 75 09 ´A»ªUÍ.]r..ûUªu.
00000050 F7 C1 01 00 74 03 FE 46 10 66 60 80 7E 10 00 74 ÷Á..t.þF.f`€~..t
00000060 26 66 68 00 00 00 00 66 FF 76 08 68 00 00 68 00 &fh....fÿv.h..h.
00000070 7C 68 01 00 68 10 00 B4 42 8A 56 00 8B F4 CD 13 |h..h..´BŠV.‹ôÍ.
00000080 9F 83 C4 10 9E EB 14 B8 01 02 BB 00 7C 8A 56 00 ŸƒÄ.žë.¸..».|ŠV.
00000090 8A 76 01 8A 4E 02 8A 6E 03 CD 13 66 61 73 1C FE Šv.ŠN.Šn.Í.fas.þ
000000A0 4E 11 75 0C 80 7E 00 80 0F 84 8A 00 B2 80 EB 84 N.u.€~.€.„Š.²€ë„
000000B0 55 32 E4 8A 56 00 CD 13 5D EB 9E 81 3E FE 7D 55 U2äŠV.Í.]ëž.>þ}U
000000C0 AA 75 6E FF 76 00 E8 8D 00 75 17 FA B0 D1 E6 64 ªunÿv.è..u.ú°Ñæd
000000D0 E8 83 00 B0 DF E6 60 E8 7C 00 B0 FF E6 64 E8 75 èƒ.°ßæ`è|.°ÿædèu
000000E0 00 FB B8 00 BB CD 1A 66 23 C0 75 3B 66 81 FB 54 .û¸.»Í.f#Àu;f.ûT
000000F0 43 50 41 75 32 81 F9 02 01 72 2C 66 68 07 BB 00 CPAu2.ù..r,fh.».
00000100 00 66 68 00 02 00 00 66 68 08 00 00 00 66 53 66 .fh....fh....fSf
00000110 53 66 55 66 68 00 00 00 00 66 68 00 7C 00 00 66 SfUfh....fh.|..f
00000120 61 68 00 00 07 CD 1A 5A 32 F6 EA 00 7C 00 00 CD ah...Í.Z2öê.|..Í
00000130 18 A0 B7 07 EB 08 A0 B6 07 EB 03 A0 B5 07 32 E4 . ·.ë. ¶.ë. µ.2ä
00000140 05 00 07 8B F0 AC 3C 00 74 09 BB 07 00 B4 0E CD ...‹ð¬<.t.»..´.Í
00000150 10 EB F2 F4 EB FD 2B C9 E4 64 EB 00 24 02 E0 F8 .ëòôëý+Éädë.$.àø
00000160 24 02 C3 49 6E 76 61 6C 69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69 $.ÃInvalid parti
00000170 74 69 6F 6E 20 74 61 62 6C 65 00 45 72 72 6F 72 tion table.Error
00000180 20 6C 6F 61 64 69 6E 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 69 loading operati
00000190 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6D 00 4D 69 73 73 69 6E ng system.Missin
000001A0 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 g operating syst
000001B0 65 6D 00 00 00 63 7B 9A DE 32 20 84 91 C0 00 00 em...c{šÞ2 „‘À..
000001C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
000001D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
000001E0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
000001F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 AA ..............Uª
m
0
l
a c 327 G Storage
October 12, 2014 3:04:00 PM

Locations 0x1BE - 0x1FD constitute the partition table. As you can see, these locations have been zeroed. I suspect that you may have initialised your drive.

Does DMDE find your old partitions? (the "show partitions" box should be checked). If so, can you see your file and folder structure if you click the found partitions? Could we see a screenshot of the partitions window?
m
0
l
October 12, 2014 3:18:32 PM

fzabkar said:
Locations 0x1BE - 0x1FD constitute the partition table. As you can see, these locations have been zeroed. I suspect that you may have initialised your drive.

Does DMDE find your old partitions? (the "show partitions" box should be checked). If so, can you see your file and folder structure if you click the found partitions? Could we see a screenshot of the partitions window?




Is that what you needed?
m
0
l
a c 327 G Storage
October 13, 2014 1:03:02 PM

Was the original drive a My Book Essentials?

The boot sector would normally be at sector 63 or 2048, depending on the OS. Can you see an "NTFS" signature at either of those locations?
m
0
l
October 15, 2014 8:47:53 AM

Yes it was a My Book Essentials when we bought it.

I used the 'Search for special sector' option and selected NTFS as the search query but it turned up with nothing. Was that the right tool to use or am I missing something here? Sorry, again, I've never worked with HDDs like this.
m
0
l
a c 327 G Storage
October 15, 2014 12:26:38 PM

Essentials models are encrypted by the USB-SATA bridge board inside the enclosure.
m
0
l
October 15, 2014 2:08:21 PM

fzabkar said:
Essentials models are encrypted by the USB-SATA bridge board inside the enclosure.


I've been running it internally for a while though. How is that possible? Or did you mean the hex is encrypted?
m
0
l
a c 327 G Storage
13 minutes ago

IIUC, you originally removed the drive from its enclosure and reformatted it for use inside your computer. Some time later you reinstalled this drive in your enclosure. If this is what you did, then your data will appear encrypted.
m
0
l
!