Hard drive showing up uninitialized in disk manager, invisible to testdisk and recuva. Any way to salvage data?

[thegnome54]

Hey all,

I have a 2TB disk that died on me this weekend. It started acting funny and then no longer listed an amount of storage, and I couldn't open it anymore. Drive is five years old so I guess it might have just given out.

I'm hoping to recover some of the data on it regardless. I took it out of my PC in the course of troubleshooting and put it back in. It's set as an internal drive. Now I cannot see it in file explorer, and TestDisk and Recuva cannot see it either. I do see it in Disk Management, as 'Unknown' and 'Not Initialized'.

Is there anything I can do to make it visible without losing data? Or should I just go ahead and initialize, then try to salvage what I can afterwards?

Thanks so much for any help!

 

[jason201]

In disk management, does it at least show it's capacity?
Also, it is it recognized correctly (model name) on device manager (under disks)?
And in answer to the main question, I wouldn't do it if I were you.
Try different data recovery software instead (such as r-studio/getdataback/file scavenger)

 

[thegnome54]

In disk management, does it at least show it's capacity?
Also, it is it recognized correctly (model name) on device manager (under disks)?
And in answer to the main question, I wouldn't do it if I were you.
Try different data recovery software instead (such as r-studio/getdataback/file scavenger)

Unfortunately it does not show the capacity or model name, just 'Unknown Not Initialized'. I'll look into the file scavenger, thanks for the tip!

 

[jason201]

What exactly does it show in device manager (under disk drives)?
Also, can you see it with crystaldiskinfo? And if so, do things look good there?

 

[thegnome54]

What exactly does it show in device manager (under disk drives)?
Also, can you see it with crystaldiskinfo? And if so, do things look good there?

Disk Manager says 'Unknown device'. When I hit properties it says:

Device type: Disk drives
Manufacturer: (Standard disk drives)
Location: Bus Number 2, Target ld 0, LUN 0
Device status: This device is working properly (great news! =P)

I downloaded CrystalDiskInfo and it does seem to see it, kind of!

File scavenger lists it as 'Disk 1 - 0 KB' with an 'Unknown partition 0 KB (at offset 0)' and wants me to give it volume properties before it will scan.

 

[jason201]

I'd say your HDD likely has a firmware corruption problem.
If the data is important (and you can afford it) then you'd be best going with a professional data recovery company.
You could try replacing the PCB (as described here):
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3647821/hard-drive-longer-bios.html#20726708
But I doubt that would work in your particular case.

 

[thegnome54]

I'd say your HDD likely has a firmware corruption problem.
If the data is important (and you can afford it) then you'd be best going with a professional data recovery company.
You could try replacing the PCB (as described here):
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3647821/hard-drive-longer-bios.html#20726708
But I doubt that would work in your particular case.

Thank you so much! Would Initializing the drive possibly allow me to access it if it was firmware corruption? It's not worth paying for professional services but I'd take the chance at getting scraps this way if it might work.

Also, is there any reason to believe that I've got a firmware corruption issue vs a PCB issue or do they basically manifest the same way? Do you say it's unlikely to help simply because PCB damage is less common and this seems like a wear-and-tear issue?

I really appreciate your help with this!

 

[jason201]

Initializing it is unlikely to work, but if you've got nothing to lose, you could give it a go.
Anyhow, PCB failures typically cause the hard drive not to be recognized at all (or not spin even), in your case however, the PCB is clearly working fine, and the fact that you suddenly can't access the drive's partitions (and that the SMART data is inaccessible) is a strong indicator of a firmware related issue.

 

[RolandJS]

Guys, Gals, two quick questions: Initialization, while it may not overwrite the data, definitely overwrites the MFT, correct? And, does that process also eliminate the present partition(s) from the "partition-table"?