Hard drive not detecting - Disk Managements prompts to ReInitialize it

[shaqblogs2011]

I have an external powered harddrive 500GB WD. It does not show up in My Computer.

Earlier
Until a couple of hours ago I was getting the following message (at least the drive was being detected)
Earlier Error: You need to format the disk drive before you can use it.
At that point in time, I was attempting recovery using TestDisk. But I could not proceed after the first 3-4 steps. I restarted my system and now the drive does not even show up in My computer.

And Now...
Recuva shows the drive in the drives list, but has a weird drive name along with a GUID.
Drive Name: Local Disk (\\?\Volume{<GUID>})

I also tried running Find and Mount. It shows the drive but it shows as size 0KB. I ran a scan and it completes immediately and there are no partitions visible.

I opened Disk Management and it now detects my disk but asks me to Initialize it with an option for MBR or GPT..
Message: You must initialize the disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it.

What should I do, to try and recover the data? Should I first allow Disk Management to initialize the disk? If yes, what next?
I have a spare 1 TB hard drive that I can use temporarily.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there shaqblogs2011,

You shouldn't initialize the HDD as it could be data destructive. Also, if the data on the HDD is really important, I would say that your safest bet of recovering the data is to contact a data recovery company.
Apart from that, have you tried something simple as just changing the cables? If not, it may be a good idea to do so. What is the model of the drive? If it is not a hardware encrypted one(WD Elements), you can try taking it out of the enclosure in order to connect it internally through SATA. Keep in mind that this will void the warranty(if under any).
Also, I have came across some similar cases where users use Linux Live CD. I guess you can try that one as well.

WD's Data Recovery Partners: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=xiRMgH

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

 

[fzabkar]

@shaqblogs2011, a capacity of zero is often symptomatic of an internal fault, usually a damaged firmware module or weak heads or both.

After attaching the drive directly to a SATA port, I would try to retrieve the drive's firmware using SeDiv.

http://sediv2008.narod.ru/Easy3.9Password01234567890.rar
http://sediv2008.narod.ru/Settings.rar

SeDiv WD Read ROM & Modules:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UgFfhkkAwY

More information at http://www.hddoracle.com.

 

[shaqblogs2011]

I just have movies and few other stuff in it. So not gonna go the professional way. I'll be trying to recover this myself.
If i can recover it would be great.

I removed the harddrive from the enclosure and connected to my desktop SATA ports directly, and it behaved same way. So problem is with the hard disk for sure.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Damaged firmware is kinda good to have since we can swap the PCB's. But any problem with head highly decreases my chances of recovering it myself.


Edit: Going through those links/files of SeDiv. BitDefender flagged it as virus.
30/57 flagged it as a virus - https://www.virustotal.com/

 

[fzabkar]

BitDefender is reporting a false positive. SeDiv is packed with a freeware tool called Orien. That's what is triggering the alert. If you upload the unpacked executables to virustotal.com (where they will be scanned by approximately 40 different antivirus software), you will see that Kaspersky and other AV products will give it the all clear.

As for firmware problems, the majority of the firmware is located in a hidden System Area (SA) on the platters. That's probably were the problem is. It's not a good sign. :-(

See http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2472284/hdds-ssds-issues.html