Question Hard drive not showing up

[daddystabz]

I have an internal hard drive with important files on it that I placed in an external enclosure a while back. It has now stopped showing up in my drives in My Computer. I've tried moving it to other USB ports to no avail. In Disk Management it is showing as: 'unknown / not initialized.'

I have data on it. What should I do to make it show up but not lose data?

 

[USAFRet]

"an internal hard drive with important files on it "

Quite possibly the external enclosure has failed.
Did you try putting it back in the PC?

Because you're asking, may we assume this is the only copy of these "important files" ?

 

[daddystabz]

I have not tried putting it into the PC, no. This is the the only backup of these files, yes. It is showing as not initialized in Disk Management.

 

[USAFRet]

I have not tried putting it into the PC, no. This is the the only backup of these files, yes. It is showing as not initialized in Disk Management.

"backup" implies this is a second (or third) copy.
Not the only copy.

Try it back internally in a PC.

Just know...any action you take with this may lessen the chance of 'recovery'.

 

[daddystabz]

There is no way to work on it in Disk Management to maybe get it to show up again? Disk Management is just showing it as not initialized.

 

[USAFRet]

There is no way to work on it in Disk Management to maybe get it to show up again? Disk Management is just showing it as not initialized.

And if you click Initialize...say byebye to your data.

 

[Turb0Yoda]

Initialize only does a wipe of the MBR iirc.. May be possible to image the drive with FTK Imager, grab data from the e01, and wipe and reuse the external.

 

[USAFRet]

Initialize only does a wipe of the MBR iirc.. May be possible to image the drive with FTK Imager, grab data from the e01, and wipe and reuse the external.

"may be possible"
Are YOU willing to take that chance with HIS only copy of "important data"?

I'm not.

First, put it back in the PC as internal and see what happens.

 

[daddystabz]

I just tried to install it inside the PC and it is still not showing up.

 

[daddystabz]

Will method 1 delete all data on the hard drive? What is the advantage to MBR or GPT? Why would I choose one over the other? It is a 350 GB hard drive, so I guess that MBR would be fine.

 

[daddystabz]

Initialize only does a wipe of the MBR iirc.. May be possible to image the drive with FTK Imager, grab data from the e01, and wipe and reuse the external.

How would I image the drive to try to save the data? Will that be a step during the initialization process?

 

[Turb0Yoda]

"may be possible"
Are YOU willing to take that chance with HIS only copy of "important data"?

I'm not.

First, put it back in the PC as internal and see what happens.

FTK will mount at read only- I say May because I don't know what's happened to the drive beforehand