Hey my name is Lori and my windows crashed, had to reinstall windows 10, I have 3 hard drives, and 2 are missing. They are all are 1 TB, I got the C: drive to work long enough to transfer files to the D: but now the D and E are missing. I can see them in bios and device manager, but not in disk management or on the computer. I think the information that is on the 2 other drives are gone, but I cant be sure. If I do find them, I don't want to format as I don't want the data lost. I have had to find drives before. Im really frustrated. I have had to format them before but didnt have anything on them. Going a little back over 1 year ago got new motherboard, processor, and ram, AMD FX 8350 4.00 GHz anyway I should have formatted the HD but didn't, to co-inside with the new hardware, dumb I know. Now im in a bind as I need the data on the other 2 hard drives. as well as needing to find them. Any help to get the computer to recognize the drives without formatting them would be appreciated. If the data is lost can i recover almost 2 full drives?
Have 3 internal Hard Drives, 2 are missing, shows in bios and in device mgr.
- Thread starter lchubeck
- Start date
ashifkhanoppoa37
Upstanding
- Feb 17, 2018
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Open cmd.
Type diskpart.
Type diskpart.
Type list disk.
Your disks will appear here now select your drives which are not showing. And clean
Type select disk(1,2,3,4,5) whichis not showing
Type clean.
Now open disk management and you see your drives create partition and your drives become visible
Never select disk 0 it is yourboot drive
Type diskpart.
Type diskpart.
Type list disk.
Your disks will appear here now select your drives which are not showing. And clean
Type select disk(1,2,3,4,5) whichis not showing
Type clean.
Now open disk management and you see your drives create partition and your drives become visible
Never select disk 0 it is yourboot drive
The advice above WILL wipe ALL of the info on those drives. You said you'd really rather not lose all that data.
So try this. Go back into Disk Management. SCROLL through everything there, paying special attention to the stuff low on the list. You should find those HDD units there, since both BIOS Setup and Device Manager can "see" them. BUT they may NOT have any letter name attached to them. So, IF they appear to have valid Partitions on them with your data, go to each of the drives in turn. For each Partition, RIGHT-click on it and choose to assign a letter name to it. You cannot use a letter already being used by something else. Once you have assigned names to all the Partitions with data on them, back out and reboot. You should find the drive in My Computer.
So try this. Go back into Disk Management. SCROLL through everything there, paying special attention to the stuff low on the list. You should find those HDD units there, since both BIOS Setup and Device Manager can "see" them. BUT they may NOT have any letter name attached to them. So, IF they appear to have valid Partitions on them with your data, go to each of the drives in turn. For each Partition, RIGHT-click on it and choose to assign a letter name to it. You cannot use a letter already being used by something else. Once you have assigned names to all the Partitions with data on them, back out and reboot. You should find the drive in My Computer.
That is intriguing. How do you know there is no data to use? What does Disk Management show you? Does it display Partitions with info about their size? Or, does it just show you a box or two with the label "Unallocated Space"?
In attempting to deal with this problem, did you try to do any changes to those disks? Did you do anything like write something to them (hard to do if Windows can't show them), or Format or Initialize them, or try using Diskpart to Clean or something?
Depending on the history and the info displayed by Disk Management, there are tools to recover data that has not been destroyed. But they work on a HDD that does NOT have a significant hardware problems. So your first step might well be to use some disk diagnostic tools to test for problems. There are good tools for this you can get for free that do NOT tamper with the data so that they are safe to use in your case. But there are others that can destroy data, so you will need to pay attention to what they say they will do.
To start, what manufacturer made the HDD's? If they were from WD, go to their website and download and install on your working C: drive their Data LifeGuard utility suite for Windows. These tools will work only on HDD's from WD. If they are from Seagate, get their SeaTools for Windows utility. If from another maker, check their website for free diagnostics. In each case they will present a menu of tools to use, and the simplest ones that do NOT try to FIX something will not tamper with data. They will merely read info on the drive and then try to read stuff from the Sectors. Then they report to you what they find. First there usually is a system to read and report the SMART data from the unit - this is a summary of what the HDD unit already knows about its state. After that, often there are a Short Test and a Long Test. The Short tries out a sampling of the HDD to see if anything works OK. If it passes that, you can run a Long Test to read from EVERY Sector and find any that are faulty. If the disk passes both of those, then the HDD has NO hardware problems and all its difficulties are software-related. That is, somewhere there is a small chunk of corrupted data that Windows cannot make sense of, so it can't do anything. This is good, because that would indicate that data recovery tools CAN get your data back.
Do NOT use any tool that warns you that it will destroy any data on your disk.
So, if your testing shows the HDD's OK from the hardware perspective, post back here and we can discuss what data recovery tools you can try. NOTE that most such tools will NOT write corrections to the HDD, because that might damage your data. Instead they all want to COPY the files they recover to a separate place on a different HDD. Once all that data has been copied, you can wipe the HDD clean and re-Initialize it so it is fully functional, then copy all that recovered data back to it and destroy the first copy on the "other" HDD. So, to do this for each HDD separately, you will need space on a second HDD to store its recovered data temporarily.
In attempting to deal with this problem, did you try to do any changes to those disks? Did you do anything like write something to them (hard to do if Windows can't show them), or Format or Initialize them, or try using Diskpart to Clean or something?
Depending on the history and the info displayed by Disk Management, there are tools to recover data that has not been destroyed. But they work on a HDD that does NOT have a significant hardware problems. So your first step might well be to use some disk diagnostic tools to test for problems. There are good tools for this you can get for free that do NOT tamper with the data so that they are safe to use in your case. But there are others that can destroy data, so you will need to pay attention to what they say they will do.
To start, what manufacturer made the HDD's? If they were from WD, go to their website and download and install on your working C: drive their Data LifeGuard utility suite for Windows. These tools will work only on HDD's from WD. If they are from Seagate, get their SeaTools for Windows utility. If from another maker, check their website for free diagnostics. In each case they will present a menu of tools to use, and the simplest ones that do NOT try to FIX something will not tamper with data. They will merely read info on the drive and then try to read stuff from the Sectors. Then they report to you what they find. First there usually is a system to read and report the SMART data from the unit - this is a summary of what the HDD unit already knows about its state. After that, often there are a Short Test and a Long Test. The Short tries out a sampling of the HDD to see if anything works OK. If it passes that, you can run a Long Test to read from EVERY Sector and find any that are faulty. If the disk passes both of those, then the HDD has NO hardware problems and all its difficulties are software-related. That is, somewhere there is a small chunk of corrupted data that Windows cannot make sense of, so it can't do anything. This is good, because that would indicate that data recovery tools CAN get your data back.
Do NOT use any tool that warns you that it will destroy any data on your disk.
So, if your testing shows the HDD's OK from the hardware perspective, post back here and we can discuss what data recovery tools you can try. NOTE that most such tools will NOT write corrections to the HDD, because that might damage your data. Instead they all want to COPY the files they recover to a separate place on a different HDD. Once all that data has been copied, you can wipe the HDD clean and re-Initialize it so it is fully functional, then copy all that recovered data back to it and destroy the first copy on the "other" HDD. So, to do this for each HDD separately, you will need space on a second HDD to store its recovered data temporarily.
They are all WD HDD's. I downloaded and they all said passed. Now the recovery is what I need
to be able to gain the solution that I seek. I built this computer, and I have had to reinstall windows before but it has never touched the secondary drives when I formatted, this is why I am so frustrated. It says it cant be diagnosed due to it needing to be formatted. If I format it I will definitely lose all the data.
Yes, Formatting certainly will destroy old data.
Since your tests indicate the drives do NOT have any hardware problems, data recovery is the next step. There are several products available. Some are freeware, some you must pay for. Some you can get a free sample version that is able to recover a PART of your data only, just to demonstrate it can work. In your case you might want to buy a full version since you have two complete drives to recover from.
Sometimes the free sample version is the best place to start. If you download and use that version of a particular product you can see whether it really can find your data and recover it.
GetBackData is one tool I've read about available here for $80
https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
They do an interesting thing. You download and install and run their software for FREE. It goes to work on your drive and shows you all the files it can recover. You even can examine directories and the files themselves to verify what it has found. IF you are satisfied that it can do all you need and get all your files, then you do NOT exit the software. You use an option to go back to their website and pay for the product key. When you enter that key in the running software, THEN it will actually copy all it has recovered onto another HDD to save it. It never writes to the problem HDD. At that point you own the software and can re-use it for another disk. And all your recovered data are on the second good drive. Then you clean the troubled disk and re-Initialize it, and copy all your recovered files back onto the repaired drive. Later you can wipe out the copies on the second drive when you're fully confident the repaired drive has all its old data back.
Then on to the next drive.
IF you do NOT think that the software can do the whole job, you do NOT buy their product key. You simply exit out of the software and nothing has been changed on the troubled drive. Then you are free to try out some other recovery tool on the drive.
Here's a place on Tom's where you can get an older version for free, it says.
https://downloads.tomsguide.com/GetDataBack-for-NTFS,0301-33764.html
Recuva is another. Review here
https://www.lifewire.com/recuva-review-2622892
Software here
https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
Note that the free version is somewhat limited, and the Pro version for $20 claims to be better.
Another is EaseUS here
https://www.easeus.com/ad/recover-hard-drive.htm?gclid=Cj0KCQjwnfLVBRCxARIsAPvl82EYSIQZKmUrgceiZHxsAsnfqLcJvP35dsnGHTtXxGGDz0ZGei02zmoaAiTmEALw_wcB
Both free trial version and paid ($56) versions available.
See also this collection of reviews by PC Magazine
https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/353756/the-best-data-recovery-software?source=autosuggest
Since your tests indicate the drives do NOT have any hardware problems, data recovery is the next step. There are several products available. Some are freeware, some you must pay for. Some you can get a free sample version that is able to recover a PART of your data only, just to demonstrate it can work. In your case you might want to buy a full version since you have two complete drives to recover from.
Sometimes the free sample version is the best place to start. If you download and use that version of a particular product you can see whether it really can find your data and recover it.
GetBackData is one tool I've read about available here for $80
https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
They do an interesting thing. You download and install and run their software for FREE. It goes to work on your drive and shows you all the files it can recover. You even can examine directories and the files themselves to verify what it has found. IF you are satisfied that it can do all you need and get all your files, then you do NOT exit the software. You use an option to go back to their website and pay for the product key. When you enter that key in the running software, THEN it will actually copy all it has recovered onto another HDD to save it. It never writes to the problem HDD. At that point you own the software and can re-use it for another disk. And all your recovered data are on the second good drive. Then you clean the troubled disk and re-Initialize it, and copy all your recovered files back onto the repaired drive. Later you can wipe out the copies on the second drive when you're fully confident the repaired drive has all its old data back.
Then on to the next drive.
IF you do NOT think that the software can do the whole job, you do NOT buy their product key. You simply exit out of the software and nothing has been changed on the troubled drive. Then you are free to try out some other recovery tool on the drive.
Here's a place on Tom's where you can get an older version for free, it says.
https://downloads.tomsguide.com/GetDataBack-for-NTFS,0301-33764.html
Recuva is another. Review here
https://www.lifewire.com/recuva-review-2622892
Software here
https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
Note that the free version is somewhat limited, and the Pro version for $20 claims to be better.
Another is EaseUS here
https://www.easeus.com/ad/recover-hard-drive.htm?gclid=Cj0KCQjwnfLVBRCxARIsAPvl82EYSIQZKmUrgceiZHxsAsnfqLcJvP35dsnGHTtXxGGDz0ZGei02zmoaAiTmEALw_wcB
Both free trial version and paid ($56) versions available.
See also this collection of reviews by PC Magazine
https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/353756/the-best-data-recovery-software?source=autosuggest
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