Hard drive not detected

Atyen

Honorable
Apr 5, 2015
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Hi, my WD Blue 1 TB suddenly stopped showing up today. I have another hard drive, a Samsung 320 GB, on which the Windows is installed. The PC boots, but the D: and E: partitions don't show up(Both are in the WD one). I have tried many things, I switched the SATA Cables, power cables, tried different SATA ports, everything, but nothing works. In the BIOS, sometimes it doesn't show up at all, but sometimes it does show up, but it has no name(Just the SATA port is mentioned, P0: or P1: or P2: or P3: ). Now whenever the drive had shown up like that, the BIOS had taken a long time to open, but when it hadn't shown up, the BIOS had opened instantly(After pressing DEL). I don't know what to do and there's a lot of important data on the drive.

Motherboard: Gigabyte B85M-D3H

Intel Core i3 4160
8 GB RAM
GTX 1050 Ti
 

Atyen

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Apr 5, 2015
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10,645


When I checked earlier, it was showing it as "Not recognized" and I right clicked on it and clicked "Initialize" but it showed an error message. Now, its not even showing up.
 

Atyen

Honorable
Apr 5, 2015
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Okay, let me try. BTW, is this just for recovering data or will it fix the problem??
Because I just saw I have most of the important data backed up on my External Hard Drive.
 

gaborbarla

Distinguished
Sounds like your drive just died. I think there are a few things you can try:

1) put the drive in another PC and see if the BIOS picks it up better.
2) if your BIOS sees the drive, you might have a chance to use recovery tools to see if they can find anything on the drive.
3) sometimes using an external drive enclosure helps detecting the drive, I have managed to once recover important data like this, from a drive that the BIOS didnt even see; but I also failed using this technique recently on another drive.
4) if it is really important, you can also seek help. There are many data recovery companies and you can see if they can maybe help you at a reasonable price. They are expensive, but they generally have a clean room and have to transfer parts of your drive into a working drive. This could be your only hope of recovery if your desktop solution fails.

If the drive shows up in the BIOS you can also try Western digital tools to see the extent of the damage, they might also have a recovery tool that might work, but you will have to pay in the end, and the price is always a bit steep for my liking for these recovery tools.

Good luck.

Also remember there is risk now with everything you do and try. You could damage the drive further just by booting up your PC with it attached.
 

Atyen

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Apr 5, 2015
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Its not showing up in the software.
 

MLG_No_Scope

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May 23, 2017
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Then there is no other conclusion than that the controller of the hard drive gave up on life. if you are gratuated to do hardware engineering, then you can replace the controller from an existing working hard drive, otherwise you need an expert to do it for you. like an hart transplant, but then with hard drives.

so you can repair the hard drive at a hardware store, or replace the hard drive entirely. make sure to ask if they want to transfer the current data to the new drive if you are planning to buy an entire new one.