Drive moved from enclosure to internal shows as unallocated

[Motoledo]

I had a normal 3.5" hard drive which I put in a USB 3.0 enclosure. I initialized and partitioned it while it was in the enclosure, and put files on it. When I removed it from the enclosure and used it as an internal drive, it didn't show up. I went into diskmgmt.msc, which told me the drive was unallocated (no partitions) and to initialize the drive.

I initialized the drive as GPT, which apparently inadvertently wiped the drive. Thanks Microsoft! Now I can't even put the drive back into the enclosure and see if it would still work. The data is probably unrecoverable (I tried MiniTool Partition Wizard and Partition Find and Mount, neither can find any partitions on the disk). I have two questions:

1) What caused the problem? A faulty drive? The fact that I tried to move a drive from a USB enclosure to a SATA cable? Should I be able to still see partitions created on a drive that was running on USB, when I move to SATA?

2) Do I need to replace the drive? Barring some explanation in response to question (1), I feel like I can't trust it at all now. What tests will definitively show that it is not in need of replacement?

 

[Solandri]

This is common with modern enclosures and large hard drives. Initially due to the transition from 512 byte to 4k sector size. Then due to the the 2TB partition size limit of MBR (the disk must be formatted as GPT to support larger partitions). To insulate the user from these complications, many enclosures write data to the drive using a proprietary format. This ensures the drive "always works" regardless of sector and partition size.

Unfortunately this means the drive isn't readable if you take it out of the enclosure, and the OS will tell you it needs to be formatted/initialized. Since you aren't supposed to remove the drive from the enclosure, HDD vendors didn't see this as a problem. The workaround is to put the drive back in the enclosure, copy your data off of it, then remove the drive and install it directly in your computer, and format/initialize it.

Unfortunately, since you already initialized it, the data is probably unrecoverable. You can try putting it back in the enclosure and see if it's recoverable that way. But there's no way to know how recovery tools will see the drive when it's in the enclosure because it's going through the enclosure's proprietary encoding layer.

The drive itself should be physically fine. It's just that data written to it while it's in the enclosure can only be read while it's in the enclosure. And data written to it while it's connected directly to a SATA port can only be read when connected to a SATA port.

 

[Motoledo]

That makes sense. Oh well, it's better than the drive being corrupted.

Is there something I should do to test to see if the hard drive is okay?

 

[JaredDM]

Solandri's answer is mostly correct. However, the specific issue depends on the brand of drive that it is.

It's not exactly a "proprietary" format as he says. But, there are some reasons why drives don't often work if you take them out of the enclosures. The most common being these two:

1. WD drives such as My Book and My Passport use a hardware level encryption on the RAW data. That way if you set a password later on the data is already encrypted and all it has to do is encrypt the encryption key using the password you set. With the My Books this is handled by the separate little PCB bridge board that adapts the USB to SATA. So if you remove it from the case it can't decrypt the data.

2. Seagate externals just have a sector size issue. Their newer drives are all 4k sector size, however pretty much all seagate drives will emulate the legacy 512byte sector size for older equipment. This is done by the HDDs own PCB. Their externals are no exception to this. However, via the USB to SATA bridge board they actually re-emulate it back to 4K sector size. So it's 4K -> 512b -> 4K emulation going on. If you remove the drive though, your motherboard will read it as 512b sectors. So something like the MBR partition table will be spread across 8 sectors instead of just 1 and the system won't recognize it. Data recovery software such as R-Studio will generally be able to access it still.

The fact that data recovery software isn't finding anything leads me to assume that you've got a WD My Book....correct?

If so, then formatting it has just severely complicated what it'll take to recover the data. It can be done, don't get me wrong. But, it's not likely to be a DIY case now. It'll probably require a professional lab with equipment like PC-3000 which can handle WD encryption. I know for us to take on such a case is generally $450.

 

[Motoledo]

The fact that data recovery software isn't finding anything leads me to assume that you've got a WD My Book....correct?

It's a WD Blue 5400 RPM drive (in other words, a normal internal desktop drive) that I was using in a StarTech USB enclosure (this one).

Is there some test I should do to see if the hard drive is still functioning correctly? I've already formatted and repartitioned the drive. Would doing a bad sector test still be useful?

 

[ArtPog]

Obviously you may be dealing with a defective drive. Whenever you run into a problem along the lines you have mentioned, one of the first - if not, THE FIRST trouble-shooting step is to test the health of the drive. There are a slew of freely-available HDD diagnostic programs out there for you to use; it's probably best to at least start with the manufacturer's program - in this case the WD Data Lifeguard program.

In any event the data is most likely gone for good. If the drive proves non-defective reinstall it internally in your system and give it a go. Your original problem may have arisen due to a partitioning scheme conversion process that went awry and has nothing to do with the health of the disk.

 

[Solandri]

Yeah, if this was a third-party USB enclosure, then it should be a simple SATA-to-USB pass-through, and the drive should have worked fine when plugged directly into a SATA port.

You can run CrystalDiskInfo to check the SMART data for any problems the drive has self-logged.
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

HD Tune will also check SMART data, and let you graphically see if certain sections of your drive are having problems (common after a head crash). I normally don't suggest it because the worst thing you can do on a possibly dying drive is to test it like this. But since you've already given up on recovering any data...
http://www.hdtune.com/

I'd run these before a bad sector test. The bad sector test will remap any bad sectors it finds (assuming there are reserve sectors still available). After remapping, the problem sectors won't show up on HD Tune's graphical results (aside from longer seek times).

 

[Motoledo]

Yeah, if this was a third-party USB enclosure, then it should be a simple SATA-to-USB pass-through, and the drive should have worked fine when plugged directly into a SATA port.

You can run CrystalDiskInfo to check the SMART data for any problems the drive has self-logged.
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

HD Tune will also check SMART data, and let you graphically see if certain sections of your drive are having problems (common after a head crash). I normally don't suggest it because the worst thing you can do on a possibly dying drive is to test it like this. But since you've already given up on recovering any data...
http://www.hdtune.com/

I'd run these before a bad sector test. The bad sector test will remap any bad sectors it finds (assuming there are reserve sectors still available). After remapping, the problem sectors won't show up on HD Tune's graphical results (aside from longer seek times).

I couldn't figure out how to read the HD Tune scan results and get any useful info from them. I didn't see any mention of a SMART scan or a drive health scan in CrystalDiskInfo at all.

However, I did buy a new hard drive which is the exact same model (WD Blue 3TB 5400RPM), and it had the exact same problem! Simple SATA-to-USB pass-through or not, any partition created while the drive is in the USB enclosure is not visible when the drive is connected internally via a SATA cable, and vice versa. On the other hand, a quite old 80GB WD Black 7200RPM drive did not seem to have this problem at all; I was able to create a partition when the drive was in the enclosure which was visible later via SATA. Very strange.

 

[RolandJS]

"...Whenever you run into a problem along the lines you have mentioned, one of the first - if not, THE FIRST trouble-shooting step is to test the health of the drive..." Artpog
I absolutely believed this for years! Excellent advice! I have simply added one additional step as suggested by several DR specialists: if affordable, if possible, usb or dvd boot Macrium Reflect or anything similar and either clone the source HD onto a reliable target HD; or, full image the source HD onto any reliable external media.
Whether cloning or full imaging, do a one-pass sector by sector OneTime read, meaning no re-trying re-trying etc. Put the target HD away in a safe place, it might be needed if more drastic steps are called for. Then, do as ArtPog suggested, along with data recovery utilities suggested by great forums such as Tomshardware.