Disk Manager says 3tb HDD with content on it needs to be initialized

Qerass · Jan 1, 2015

My Seagate Barracuda 3tb was a slave drive with 3 partitions on my last computer.

On my new rig (Asus M5A78L) with the same Windows 7 version, both Disk Manager and Seagate DiscWizard say:"You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it."

How can I get Windows to recognize the existing partitions?

getochkn · Jan 1, 2015

iniitalizing doesn't format. should be fine.

Qerass · Jan 1, 2015

getochkn :

It sounds like Disk Manager is talking about formatting.

It says "Use the following partition style for the selected disks" and gives a choice between MBR (Master Boot Record) and GPT (GUID Partition Table).

Someone Somewhere · Jan 1, 2015

Writing a new partition table (initializing) will remove all partitions on the drive. It's not what you want to do.

D_Know_WD · Jan 2, 2015

Hi there Qerass,

Initialization could be data destructive. I would advise you to try re-seating the drive and swap ports and cables. If the issue persists, you may need to use some partition recovery software in order to recover the partitions.
You can check this thread out: http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/288692-disk-1-unknown-not-initialized-unallocated.html

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

fzabkar · Jan 2, 2015

When Windows asks you to initialise the drive, it means that it cannot find any known partitions in sector 0 (MBR) or sectors 0,1, and 2 (GPT).

I would examine the drive with a disc editor, eg DMDE (freeware). Could you show us DMDE's Partitions window?

http://dmde.com/

Qerass · Jan 12, 2015

fzabkar :

Thanks!

DMDE does show the 3 partitions, and I can see the intact directories and files.

Screenshot: http://postimg.org/image/ft999pn1v/full/

The 3 partitions are shown in this screenshot as "No name" partitions:
- 216 GB
- 1.37 TB
- 1.41 TB

If I do "Insert the partition (undelete)," will that recover the lost partition?

Is there a chance that might result in data loss?

Qerass · Jan 12, 2015

D_Know_WD :

Thanks!

I've tried 4 partition recovery programs, but none of them are able to see the correct sizes of the partitions, or the files, as DMDE does:

1. MiniTool Partition Recovery Wizard found 3 partitions, but described their capacity as only 3.01mb. (Screenshot: http://postimg.org/image/d3jq55b77/ )

2. AOMEI Partition Assistant had the same results. (Screenshot: http://postimg.org/image/ze7oa7ydh/full/ )

3. AOMEI Didn't display any files visible: http://postimg.org/image/3x60vlvcj/

4. EaseUS Partition Recovery says "unsupported disk" (Screenshot: http://postimg.org/image/v52v2y583/ )

fzabkar · Jan 12, 2015

@Qerass, before you do anything, I suggest that you recover your files to another drive, if possible.

AFAICT, the previous 4 partitions spanned the following sector ranges:

missing -- 36 - 262178
$Noname01 -- 264192 - 421791737
$Noname02 -- 421791744 - 3106146297
$Noname03 -- 3106146304 - 5860532217

The "missing" partition is reserved, while the others are your data partitions.

There are 4 other partitions:

Unknown -- 18 - 131089
Data -- 132096 - 210895871
Data -- 210895872 - 1553073151
Data -- 1553073152 - 2930266111

Notice that the above numbers are almost exactly half the previous set of numbers.

Notice also that the "EE" partition entry in LBA 0, and the "Last Use LBA" in LBA 2, both reflect a total capacity of 1.5TB for the physical drive rather than 3TB.

One explanation for this may be that your drive was configured for RAID mode in your BIOS, and that the RAID BIOS, or AMD's RaidXpert, selected a sector size of 1024 bytes rather than the standard 512 bytes for your RAID "array". The reason for this is that one can then partition the drive in MBR mode (because the maximum supported capacity becomes 4TiB rather than 2TiB).

Notice that the "EFI PART" signature appears in LBA 2. This signature would normally be present in LBA 1. The reason is that the GPT partitions were laid down when the sector size was 1024 bytes.

Before we proceed, can you explain how your drive is configured in BIOS, and whether you have done anything with RaidXpert?

fzabkar · Jan 12, 2015

ISTM that the system was built when the sector size was 1024 bytes. Now something has changed and the sector size is 512 bytes. In other words, we have a 1KB file system on a 512B drive.

I suspect that the simple solution would be to reconfigure the drive for RAID mode, and then select a sector size of 1024 in RaidXpert.

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Disk Manager says 3tb HDD with content on it needs to be initialized

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