Can't access SATA HDD

[Kojak00]

After a small snag with the rig (the power cable had come loose to the motherboard, no biggie), I can't access my SATA drive - it shows up in both BIOS and when I run Speccy, but not in explorer. I have a separate SDD on which I have the Windows system, but everything else - music, films, documents etc, is on that SATA drive, so I would REALLY like to get access to it again. I suspect it's a hardware problem, but I can't for my life figure out exactly what it could be.

Any help would be appreciated

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Kojak00.

Check if the drive is recognized in Disk Management and post a screenshot of it if possible, it could prove useful. Here's how to open it: How to access Disk Management in Windows. I'd also suggest that you try it with a different SATA port and cables, or even better - with a different computer, just to see if the same thing happens.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Kojak00]

I have tried another cable - the one I'm using for the SATA HD is actually the one from the DVD burner which works just fine when attached.

I have found the missing partition (I have two on that disk), but I can't assign a drive letter to it, neither in Disk management or even in Partition Master, but I have seen the content - everything is still there, but somehow, I can't get access to it. If it wasn't that I have so much quite crucial information on that partition, I guess I could wipe it, but I would really, really like to avoid that.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

That's a bit odd. Could you post a screenshot of what you see about the HDD in Disk Management?
You could try accessing the drive via Ubuntu Live USB, to see if that OS is capable of properly recognizing the partitions and file system of the HDD so that you can get to your files and back them up. Another option would be to try data recovery software: https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-recovery-software-tools-2622893

 

[Kojak00]

Data recovery just showed pretty much a jumbled mess, so no luck there, And since there wasn't anything particular in disk management, there was no surface errors and the entire thing just a nagging BS, I'm wiping the disk right now.

Oh well, better luck next time I guess. Time to break out the DVDs to burn backups.

Update: After wiping the partions, I now have one very empty partition, and one large chunk of space that I can't allocate to either a separate partition nor merge with the existing partition. The allocated space is 2 TB and the unallocated 746GB - as you can see, that's a lot of space I want to use.

I know that some motherboards won't allow for this large harddrives, but I'm using a MSI Z170A which is - or should be - new enough to allow a 3TB harddrive. Anyone have an idea on how I can do this?

 

[ArtPog]

It's necessary to partition the 3 TB HDD with the GPT partitioning scheme. I assume it's currently partitioned MBR. You might want to read up on the distinctions between MBR & GPT.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Yup, just as @ArtPog mentioned, drives larger than 2TB should be formatted with the GPT partition table in order for you to be able to take full advantage of the drive's capacity.
Make sure you've backed up the data you might have written on that drive, after that open Disk Management and right click on the formatted partition and select "delete volume", once all the space has been shown with a black border (unallocated) on the left side where it says "Disk X" (where X is the number of the disk) right click again and select "convert to GPT". After that you should be able to partition and format the full capacity of the drive.

 

[DR_Luke]

What programs did you try for data recovery? If you used the free programs, you will likely just get basic RAW recovery of files. When you say, "wiping the partitions," does that mean deleted them in disk management (takes seconds) or actually write zeroes to the drive (takes hours)? If you just deleted the partitions, the data is still there and likely still recoverable.

My favorite data recovery program to recommend is R-Studio, but you may also have luck with FileScavenger or GetDataBack.

With regards to your drive, it sin't easy to convert from MBR to GPT in Windows. I usually use a hex editor to change the last byte of sector 0 from 55AA to 55BB, refresh the drive and then it immediately looks uninitialized. From there, you can choose GPT when you re-initialize the drive in DiskManagement.

Good luck