cannot open my external hard drive even thought it says it is working properly

[baileyb]

hello

I have an external hard drive which I can see on my computer. Under disc management disk 0 "windows (c) it says healthy, boot , page file, Crash Dump, primary partition, 297 gb NTFS and data D says healthy primary partition. Underneath that one,the disk 1 says 265mb unalocated and not initialized.
I would like to recover my data from the hard drive, but it wont open. It says shortcut, proerpties troubleshooting etc. when I click on troubleshooting it says no problems detected.

I have also tried typing in the CMD info but it doesnt seem to work and it still doesnt open.
can anyone help?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there baileyb,

So, your external drive should be the unallocated one right?
In that case, you can use some partition/data recovery software in order to retrieve the data stored on the drive: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

Here's another one: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1956932/recover-files-unallocated-space-external-hard-drive.html

After that, you can test the drive with some of these: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility
The results should show you if there is something wrong with the drive.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[baileyb]

I dont know if the unallocated one is the one. it seems a bit too small.
I think it is the other one the 297gb NFTS. I think someone may have partitioned the drive but am not certain. anyway, I need to be able to open the drive and cant do it. Any advice?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Disk 0 should be your OS drive(internal one).
Disk 1 should be your external one I guess. Does it show up as only having 265mb? What is the original size of the drive?
It would be nice if you could provide a screenshot of your Disk Management.

You can go to BIOS and see how is the external drive recognized over there. Is it recognized as having its full capacity? If it shows as 265mb over there as well, then most probably there is something physically wrong with the drive.

Apart from all this, it will not hurt to try something simple as just using a different USB cable and attaching the drive to a different computer.

D_Know_WD

 

[baileyb]

hello
Have tried the 3 data recovery sites that were mentioned pandora, recuva and glarysoft. the only one I could get working was glary soft and it stated that there were no files on the local disc (external drive)
Now I know thats not true because it is full and I want to recover the data. in the disc management section Disk 1 now says 465.76 GB RAW healthy primary partition. before it said unallocated.
What should I do to recover the data which is on there?
Any other way I can do this?
Thanks

 

[baileyb]

have tried other computers and other USB cables. But no luck.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Well, unfortunately, you can't do much. You can try some more data recovery tools. Check this out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/280932-32-hard-drive-recovery

In case the data stored on the drive is really important, you could consider getting some professional help. Most of the HDD companies offer their own data recovery services or have some sort of trusted partners.

D_Know_WD

 

[baileyb]

thanks, I clicked on the link you gave and it takes me to another thread and am not sure what I am supposed to click on in the new thread as there is a lot of info there and am not technical to be able to figure out which is the best recovery site to go to.
Any advice?
I understand that I an pay $99 for the manufacturer's data recovery, which seems excessive.
So need to try the free options first.

 

[D_Know_WD]

As a representative of a company, I can'r really recommend a specific data recovery tool.
You need to look for some data recovery tools for RAW drives.
Here are some threads on that:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/281425-32-recover-ntfs-partition
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/278914-32-recover-drive-format

D_Know_WD

 

[baileyb]

hello
Thanks for all the info. I will try the RAw recovery you suggest.
Now I have a new problem, for some reason downloading these different programs has made computer not work properly for example when I click on the start button, I can no longer click on computer or control panel or any of the programs or options. I cant type anything in to the search bar, I dont know what has happened, but this is an even bigger problem unless it sorts itself out.
Any advice?
Any solution would be helpful to get this working again.
thanks