Wd external drive 0 bytes used and cant be seen at my computer

yene19

August 28, 2012 1:32:22 PM

I own a WD portable external Hard drive but after plugging it in on my friends computer I suddenly can't see it under my computer. I can see it in my device manager though I can't initialize it. I can't even partition it. It appears to be zero bites. I had a lot of important files in my Hard drive. I really need your help.

More about : external drive bytes computer

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benji720

August 28, 2012 1:39:01 PM

Try using testdisk to get the data off. If that doesn't work, you can try sending it to a data recovery service. You can also try taking the drive out of the case and hooking it up directly to a PC via SATA or a SATA to USB converter but doing that will probably void the warranty if you still have one left.

Testdisk: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

Once you get the data off you can try using diskpart which is a part of Windows. Often that will let you partition drives that Computer Management won't let you partition. Be aware that if you repartition the drive it will erase everything on the existing partition and it will be much harder to get off.

Good luck! Data recovery can be tricky.

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nullifier

August 28, 2012 1:43:04 PM

yene19 said:

I own a WD portable external Hard drive but after plugging it in on my friends computer I suddenly can't see it under my computer. I can see it in my device manager though I can't initialize it. I can't even partition it. It appears to be zero bites. I had a lot of important files in my Hard drive. I really need your help.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but it seems that the file system has failed. When you look at the drive's properties, what file system does it say it is using (ex., NTFS, FAT32, RAW)?

If it is still using NTFS/FAT32 I would recommend using chkdsk from command prompt to repair the file system, it is RAW or unknown, we will need to tackle the problem in other ways as data recovery will be a bit more complicated.

Also, just to clarify, does this occur under every computer you've plugged it into? Have you tried multiple OSes (though honestly if it is anything after XP it should read the same)? When it was unplugged before being inserted into your friends PC, was it unmounted properly (i.e., not just unplugged, but using safe device removal)?

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