HD Dissapeared and is unallocated, Extremely worried

[vexun11]

I picked up a 2TB usb 3.0 seagate goflex hard drive because I have 4 500GB WD drives and have to split all the data across all 4 so, one of the 500GB drives is external, anyway I transfered all the stuff from the drives to the new 2TB drive and like an idiot I moved it all and didnt back it up...

Anyway after I removed everything from all the 500GB drives (except the main one with windows installed on it) My 500GB WD drive was empty and showed 420/465 so I tried to format but it wouldnt let me and I was messing around trying to get it to work, I didn't know what I was doing I tried changing the drive letter just messing around and out of nowhere my new 2TB seagate drive dissapears and I am really worried,

I see it in Computer disk manager but it just shows 1863 unallocated and I am certain that I did not format it, it just dissapeared and I have my lifes collection of data on there and only have like 10% of it backed up on discs. thats why I got the drive was to back it up.

Anyway this is extremely important that I don't lose the data on this drive but I can't figure out what to do. Also one other thing, when I was trying to format my 500GB external drive that showed around 420/465GB It messed up as well so I unplugged it and it still showed up live in "my computer" I could open it up and go into the drive and create a folder.. Did it get confused with one of the other drives? all the 500 gig drives are WD caviar greens but this one is external..

I tried unplugging every drive except the drive with windows on it and my seagate drive but it still doesnt show up, it just shows it as unallocated.. I am freaking out here, ill do anything to fix this, this is priceless Data.

Thank you. Sorry it's so long.

 

[vexun11]

I'm not sure if this will help but it's just a screenshot, all I have hooked up is 1 500GB internal drive and my external 2tb seagate drive, it shows up as unallocated, and also shows up in devices and printers (safely remove hardware)



http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10296694/Screenshot%20for%20THG%20to%20get%20help%20fixing%20HD.png

 

[vexun11]

I hooked it up to my laptop and it showed it as unallocated, I am really worried, seagate wants over 900$ to recover the data, I am running power data recovery and recover my files and its showing that it's has found 26360 files, time remaining 6 hours 44 minutes.. lol..

Is it possible that I will be able to recover the files?

 

[electrontau]

Had similar problem with my portable drive. What happened is that I unplugged without clicking on "Safely Remove Hardware" icon on the systray to eject the drive. So aftewards the computer will not see the drive, and disk management shows unallocated as well. Also noticed in my case the drive has no letter assigned. So I assigned it as E drive and presto, Windows sees the drive and the contents.

I noticed in the picture you sent that there is no drive letter. Try it too and see if it works. As long you don't initialize the drive the data might still be inside the drive.

Whe you compied the files to external drive, did you use drag and drop or use seagate software?

Anyway, good luck.

 

[vexun11]

Do I have some hope? *Crosses fingers* I just used drag and drop, im running a program that's scanning the drive and its found some stuff but its been scanning for over 5 hours.

The only way I can do anything to the drive is by creating a new simple volume, im scared that it will format the drive if I do anything else that it will format the drive.

5 minutes later.

I just changed the drive letter, I didn't know that I could do so without having to format the drive. Now the drive is shown up as a Raw file system but its shown up in "my computer" I just cant open it because when I do it asks to format it.

Is this a good sign?

 

[sub mesa]

Do not remove/delete or create a new filesystem; doing so will destroy part of your data.

Instead use data recovery tools which can find deleted/corrupted partition tables, such as @Active File Recovery and hundreds of other applications that can do things like that. Try that and DO NOT WRITE TO YOUR DRIVE!

If you screw up and write to the drive you only reduce your chance at recovering data. All your data should still be on the drive you just lost access to it.

Indeed be very careful when removing the external drive; corruption can occur if you do not remove external HDDs safely. Using the 'optimize for quick removal' might be recommended to avoid this issue in the future.

 

[vexun11]

How long do you think it would take to recover all of my files if I was lucky and was able to retrieve it back?

Also are those programs expensive?

Thanks for your help.

 

[vexun11]

I got all my data back! I used Power Data Recovery and it worked excellent. I formatted the external drive and now am keeping a double backup.

Another bad thing happened but it wasn't as bad my 500GB WD Mybook external drive stopped working, When I plug the drive in I can hear it start to spin then after a few seconds the RPM's dont go any higher and you can hear it struggling 2 or 3 times then it stops. I have a bunch of my media on there but nothing as important as my other HD.

Is it possible to get this data back? I searched for the drive using Power Data Recovery and nothing showed up.

 

[vexun11]

Best answer selected by vexun11.

 

[adi007k]

Bro i had the same problem...up till a few minutes my second sata 1tb hdd was working fine....then my pc remained idle for 30 min, d next thing i saw in explorer was only my primary hdd...when chkd in disk mangmnt it showed unallocated for d secondry...scared d sht outta me...

SOLUTION: used partition find and mount (http://findandmount.com/), it scaned both hdd's, showed my 2 missing partitions of secndry hdd, clicked on mount...heaved a sigh of relief only wen i saw my all partions safe widout any data loss..

 

[Journey23]

Does anyone has a solution that will assist in addressing this issue? I recently had an external 1TB hard drive that showed up as UNALLOCATED in Windows Disk Manager. I can perform a Disk surface scan which sees the model and reads the drive, so I believe that there is a good chance for recovery. The question that I have is what is the next step for me? Do I need to purchase a Disk Recovery software tool and if so what is the best tool out there for the money? Please help..

 

[salamisnakes]

Best answer selected by vexun11.

nhey ive had the same problem with my seagate 2tb hd it says that it is unallocated in my administer tools. i need help to format it and to get it working again it has no files on it it has just suddenly stopped please help .

 

[titanchao]

Hello, could you please let me know how you assigned it as E drive?

Thank you! (*********@gmail.com) <- no email please

Had similar problem with my portable drive. What happened is that I unplugged without clicking on "Safely Remove Hardware" icon on the systray to eject the drive. So aftewards the computer will not see the drive, and disk management shows unallocated as well. Also noticed in my case the drive has no letter assigned. So I assigned it as E drive and presto, Windows sees the drive and the contents.

I noticed in the picture you sent that there is no drive letter. Try it too and see if it works. As long you don't initialize the drive the data might still be inside the drive.

Whe you compied the files to external drive, did you use drag and drop or use seagate software?

Anyway, good luck.