My Iomega external HD won't display in file explorer

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ContemplatoryLake

Commendable
Aug 23, 2016
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I'm hoping to resolve an issue I've been having with my external HD. It seems to be more complicated than i thought initially. So i'm using an Iomega Prestige 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive in conjunction with an LG HD smart tv and my laptop.

My laptop is a lenovo z50 running windows 10 which i've used for about a year now with the hard drive and up until yesterday had no issues with. I'd like to preface this by saying I've never had to configure the external HD to work with either the tv or the laptop and as far as i know that's never changed.
The problem occurred yesterday when i tried to access the HD to write some files to it.
The HD works fine on my tv and all files are accessible/playable. On my latptop the HD starts up and it shows up in 'safely remove and eject hardware' as 'USB to serial ATA- bridge'. However in file explorer it's nowhere to be seen at all. i ran disk management and this is what it displays:

DeviceManager.png
[/URL][/img]

The external HD is represented as 'Basic1' in the picture here which again is odd because usually it would be displayed 'removable'

In device manager strangely it seems to list the model of the ACTUAL interior HD rather than the casing manafacturer (since Iomega never actually produced HD's themselves):

DeviceManager1.png
[/URL][/img]

I'm just wondering what on earth has changed between me using it 2 weeks ago and now. All i did was update windows 10 with the latest updates. Seeing as the HD works perfectly fine on my TV i can only assume it has something to do with the update? So i rolled back to a previous build of windows 10 but the problem persists. Any help would be greatly appreciated

 
Solution
Boogieman_WD
You should not mess with the partitions in any way, even if you're not reformatting them. This could cause issues with the data on them. Basically when the partition is RAW it says that there's no File System, thus the OS can't communicate with it and read/write the data on it.
The Ubuntu Live option, is nothing more than connecting your HDD to a Linux computer, to see if the OS can recognize the drive and its partitions and more importantly if you can gain access to what's on the drive. So all you'll need is a flash drive and several minutes to give it a try: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows.

As for the data recovery program suggestion, unfortunately as an official WD rep, I can't recommend a...
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Jul 31, 2014
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Hey there, ContemplatoryLake.

These things happen sometimes when you use external storage devices with TVs, media players, consoles etc, although in this case you've mentioned that this was caused by the Win 10 update. It could've been a coincidence. Basically the best case scenario would be if you don't need the data on that drive. If you need it you'd either have to try the drive with a different computer, to see if you'd be able to access it, or try accessing it via Ubuntu Live USB/DVD, or data recovery software: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm. Another option would be to use another external drive with your TV if you have a second USB port and if you can transfer data between the two drives via your TV.
If you don't need to recover data, download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool (or a 3rd party one if the manufacturer doesn't offer such a tool) and test it for errors and bad sectors, to see if anything unusual pops-up. If everything's OK just reformat the drive to see if you'd be able to use it properly with both the TV and the laptop again.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
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ContemplatoryLake

Commendable
Aug 23, 2016
3
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1,510


Thanks for the advice. I tried data recovery with Seagate Tools but even tht program isn't picking up the HD. The fact is, there's absolutely no problems with playback using my TV so it can't be the HD itself can it? There must have been some kind of file system change within the HD whilst i was using it with either the TV, my console or the PC. i'm just not sure what to do because i don't want to delete the data just access it. Is there some othr program or windows command i can use to figure out what change has taken place?
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

Judicious
Jul 31, 2014
6,050
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Well, sometimes when a drive is used with the aforementioned devices (TVs, consoles, etc.) it gets "married" to them, which means that it's not usable with a PC until you reformat it, but you're still able to see everything on the device that caused the issue. Everything really points to this type of issue. From what I see your computer can't recognized the partitions - 3 of which are shown as unallocated disk space and one seems to have been formatted but the File System is not recognized. Try some of the other data recover suggestions from the link in my previous post, or give it a go with Ubuntu Live, to see if it can recognize the partitions properly so that you can easily copy those files to another drive.
 
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ContemplatoryLake

Commendable
Aug 23, 2016
3
0
1,510


Thanks for your advice. I'm honestly pretty stressed out by this because the stuff i have on there can't be replaced :(. i tried to create another partition with the 411.gb on the far right but it ended up turning RAW. However i made sure to choose not to format while i was doing this so i don't think anything was actually deleted. Will Ubuntu Live allow me to recover RAW files and make them usable again i.e a movie? Or are RAW files just pure data that can't be used for anything anymore? Sorry i'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to this sort of thing. In your opinion though what's the best route to go with now that a portion of my HD data is RAW? Ubunutu Live or Data Recovery? Also what would you say the best freeware data recovery program is? I tried EaseUS but it wouldn't let me recover the files unless i paid the £70. I didn't actually realise the trial version was that restrictive.

EDIT: I just tried Recuva but it couldn't even detect my external HD so i uninstalled. Going to see if DMDE works. DMDE did work and it picked up the rive as IOMEGA but unfortunately it's recovery is restricted unless i buy the full version.
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

Judicious
Jul 31, 2014
6,050
2
35,960
You should not mess with the partitions in any way, even if you're not reformatting them. This could cause issues with the data on them. Basically when the partition is RAW it says that there's no File System, thus the OS can't communicate with it and read/write the data on it.
The Ubuntu Live option, is nothing more than connecting your HDD to a Linux computer, to see if the OS can recognize the drive and its partitions and more importantly if you can gain access to what's on the drive. So all you'll need is a flash drive and several minutes to give it a try: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows.

As for the data recovery program suggestion, unfortunately as an official WD rep, I can't recommend a specific product/device, which is not under the WD brand. That's why I've sent you a link with lots of option from which you can try whatever you like. In my personal opinion, if you're sure that a certain program would be able to recover your files and if they're very important to you, it would be a lot more budget friendly (to say the least) than going for a data recover company.
 
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