1TB External HD only shows in Device Manager, says not initialized, 0 capacity

[alabamablueman]

This is a 4 month old Seagate 1TB HD used only on two Windows computers. Had a few hundred gigs of data. Literally overnight it went from working perfectly to showing up on Device Manager only, not on My Computer. Tried several cables. Has power, makes light beeps and buzzes when I plug it in.

In Disk Management Volumes Tab, it says "Type Unknown", Status "Not Initialized", Partition Style "Not Applicable", Capacity 0MB, Unallocated Space 0 MB, Reserved Space 0MB. There are no horizontal bars/partitions. Under Disk 1 it says Unknown, Not Initialized. It does not give me an option to give it a letter. The results are the same in three computers (the two it has been used on and one random coworker's computer).

Any chance of recovering my data? Any idea how this happened?

 

[JaredDM]

Is the HDD itself making the beeps? Is it clicking? Is it spinning down after the beeps?

 

[alabamablueman]

Is the HDD itself making the beeps? Is it clicking? Is it spinning down after the beeps?

Thanks for responding. Yes, the HDD is making the noises. Beeps, soft whirrs, no clicks. Maybe 3 seconds and then silence. Power light remains on. Same response whether plugged directly into computer or into hub.

 

[hang-the-9]

Usually when the system detects the drive is in but no drive letter or anything else, the communication between the USB cable and the drive is messed up. It may be a bad drive, but it may just be a bad interface.

Since it's new, you may want to contact the drive vendor, only issue with sending them the drive is that they generally are not responsible for saving your data, but fixing or replacing the drive.

See if using the drive in another system works, or try it on a Linux boot disk to rule out some Windows issue with reading the file system.

If nothing helps, you can try to remove the drive from the enclosure and try to read it directly with a desktop and SATA cable. You need to make sure the drive inside is a standard one, as some use a custom board without a SATA connection and that makes reading it in a regular computer impossible. That will also void the warranty of course, but if you did not backup your data on that drive or have another copy, then you may want to take this path.

 

[alabamablueman]

Thank you. I am going to try the desktop/SATA fix...or more precisely, one of my tech pals with the tools and skills is. At this point, I can't recover the data and I am loathe to pay $100+ to a recovery service, so I think that's my best option.

Usually when the system detects the drive is in but no drive letter or anything else, the communication between the USB cable and the drive is messed up. It may be a bad drive, but it may just be a bad interface.

Since it's new, you may want to contact the drive vendor, only issue with sending them the drive is that they generally are not responsible for saving your data, but fixing or replacing the drive.

See if using the drive in another system works, or try it on a Linux boot disk to rule out some Windows issue with reading the file system.

If nothing helps, you can try to remove the drive from the enclosure and try to read it directly with a desktop and SATA cable. You need to make sure the drive inside is a standard one, as some use a custom board without a SATA connection and that makes reading it in a regular computer impossible. That will also void the warranty of course, but if you did not backup your data on that drive or have another copy, then you may want to take this path.

 

[Ruphine]

This just happened to me.
How did it go for you? Did you get your data back?