External Hard Drive HELL (Unknown, Not Initialized)

Grain40

Commendable
Jul 1, 2016
2
0
1,510
I had a WD 2TB external drive which I transferred successfully to a USB 3.0 enclosure months ago. Then I moved and the drive has been packed away in the trunk of my car since.

I just got it out as I need some files on it, and when I hooked it up it didn't work: the computer recognized it as a CD drive or something... in Computer it would not show up or show up as just a drive letter ... in disk management it said No Media. I tried it on another PC too to no avail.

After much research, the most likely solution looked to be to get a new enclosure. So I did, but the drive still isn't working, but in a different way.

When I first hooked it up, all looked well: the system tray showed correct recognition of the drive and enclosure type/brand and installed the drivers successfully.

But the drive no longer shows up in Computer at all, and in disk management it now prompts me to initialize the disk, and has it marked as Unknown, Not Initialized.

I have spent all day trying to fix this problem, and have read a million threads on different sites and tried everything, to no consequence. I need the files on the drive, and have tried all of the following:

- booting in ubuntu and knoppix via cd - drive is not recognized

- every major app for this type of problem i saw recommended: seagate seatools, partition wizard, wd data lifeguard diagnostics, power data recovery, find and mount, a bunch of stuff on hiren's boot cd, test disk, etc.

In most cases, the drive was not recognized at all. In a couple instances it was, but no scans were successful - they would instantly say failed, or complete instantly showing no results.

The drive sounds fine when it is turned on/hooked to the pc: it sounds normal, spins like it should, no weird noises.

I have no idea what to do. The only thing left that I'm aware of is to initialize it (against most of the advice I read) and hope it then at least gets recognized by some of the recovery apps.

But I don't want to lose my data and this seems like an absolute last resort.

Help!
 
Solution


Sounds like your hard drive is dead, you should expect your drives to have roughly a 3 year life span, after that the failure rates goes up rather sharply. When/If you replace the drive, use it as a backup, not to keep single copies of files on. Nothing good comes from having an external drive to hold files on without having a second set of backups for it.
Hi there Grain40,

What was the model of the WD drive? You used a third party enclosure afterwards right?

Given the fact that you can't really access the drive with software tools, my suggestion would be to attach the drive internally(SATA & power cables), so you can rule out a possible faulty enclosure/connection cause.

In case the issue persists, and if you have some really important data stored on the drive, I would advise you to contact a data recovery company. You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=hgxNzU

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD :)


 

Grain40

Commendable
Jul 1, 2016
2
0
1,510
Hey Dknow, it's an older drive, I probably got it ten or more years ago. It's a My Book I believe, model number is WDC something I think (model # no longer shows in device mangager, it now shows the model/brand of the enclosure). I will try connecting internally to an XP desktop.
 


Sounds like your hard drive is dead, you should expect your drives to have roughly a 3 year life span, after that the failure rates goes up rather sharply. When/If you replace the drive, use it as a backup, not to keep single copies of files on. Nothing good comes from having an external drive to hold files on without having a second set of backups for it.
 
Solution

venubabu

Reputable
Nov 19, 2014
2
0
4,510