[SOLVED] GPT Protective Partition on Western Digital Black 4Tb.

Billyboy17

Commendable
Oct 19, 2016
4
0
1,510
I got a new computer and it was time to retire my old work horse. I thought I had gotten everything I needed off of the drive before it was time to transfer over to the new computer but I for got some things on the old hard drive. I don't have anything to run it on but I have connection cables and interfaces to get the drive online but the drive doesn't show up on windows explorer.

Upon further inspection in Disk Management it says "Healthy GPT Protective Partition".

I have been trying to look for solutions to this with out nuking the entire drive to no avail. I have tried Recuva and it can not do anything.

Please Some one help!

Update:
Merry Christmas to all and happy Holidays. I have bought a different interface. Something a little more modern, supports USB 3.0 and made by Startech. Now when the drive shows up in disk manager it says theres no media.
 
Solution
GPT is just the partition table type. It's totally normal and Windows can work with a GPT partition table natively with no issues.

More likely your issue relates to the device you're using to connect it to the computer. Many USB adapters and docks don't support drives larger than 2Tb sizes. So it'll spit out a partition table error (e.g. mentioning GPT) when it's confused because the drive is showing a partition table that's larger than it thinks the drive actually is.

Try a new adapter that is listed specifically as supporting drives larger than 2Tb.

JaredDM

Honorable
GPT is just the partition table type. It's totally normal and Windows can work with a GPT partition table natively with no issues.

More likely your issue relates to the device you're using to connect it to the computer. Many USB adapters and docks don't support drives larger than 2Tb sizes. So it'll spit out a partition table error (e.g. mentioning GPT) when it's confused because the drive is showing a partition table that's larger than it thinks the drive actually is.

Try a new adapter that is listed specifically as supporting drives larger than 2Tb.
 
Solution