External HD got split into 3 and data appears to be gone

Lightning_3

Commendable
Dec 11, 2016
3
0
1,510
i have a WD 6tb my book. a couple of friends were over playing a game when i walked in and saw one of them trying to find the .exe for a game instead of just going through steam. once they left i sat down and saw 6tb ext read ESD-USB instead of what it read before and instead of 6tb it said i only had 31.99 with 2 other unallocated partitions with the rest of the space. i dont know how it got like this. please help.
 
Solution
Hey there, Lightning_3.

Sorry to hear about what happened with your HDD. :(

Have you ever experienced any issues with it prior to this one? It's not normal for a drive to repartition and reformat itself all on its own. Do you have important irreplaceable data (e.g. photos, videos, documents, etc.), which you wish to recover?
You could go ahead and try it out with a different USB cable and a different computer, to see if its partition/s are properly recognized.
If that doesn't help you might have to reformat the HDD, but not before you've tried to recover important files. You could give it a go with data recovery software: https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-recovery-software-tools-2622893.
On the other hand, if you don't need to...
Hey there, Lightning_3.

Sorry to hear about what happened with your HDD. :(

Have you ever experienced any issues with it prior to this one? It's not normal for a drive to repartition and reformat itself all on its own. Do you have important irreplaceable data (e.g. photos, videos, documents, etc.), which you wish to recover?
You could go ahead and try it out with a different USB cable and a different computer, to see if its partition/s are properly recognized.
If that doesn't help you might have to reformat the HDD, but not before you've tried to recover important files. You could give it a go with data recovery software: https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-recovery-software-tools-2622893.
On the other hand, if you don't need to recover files from that drive, I'd recommend that you download DLG (Data Lifeguard) and test the drive for errors by running both tests - Quick and Extended (this one might take several hours due to the large capacity of the drive), to see if there's anything out of the ordinary with the HDD itself. Here's how to do it: How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
Solution