[SOLVED] HDD from external drive is showing strange partitions

[yurt66]

Hi Experts,
I have an old 2TB HDD that I pulled out of an external case a long time ago.
I recently hooked it up and I am stuck with the following:

image of computer management
I have a 233.88Gb RAW partition followed by 1630.14Gb Unallocated
I am sure this is wrong - it would have been formatted as a single partition of 2Tb, probably NTFS.

The drive is a Barracuda 2000Gb Model ST2000DM001

I know for a fact that the drive had data on it. I vaguely remember an issue with drives of this vintage requiring that you hook them up via their original external case.
So I found another external drive that I had with the same drive in it, and I opened it up and mounted the drive this way. But still the same.

I also tried R-Studio but it could not recover anything useful.

Can someone enlighten me as to how I can recover the original partition that would have existed?

Thanks

 

[SkyNetRising]

Can someone enlighten me as to how I can recover the original partition that would have existed?

Put it into original external enclosure.
If you want to use it without original enclosure, you have to repartition and reformat the drive.

You can read here about, why that happens.
https://www.klennet.com/notes/2018-04-14-usb-and-sector-size.aspx

 

[yurt66]

Thank you. That does sound like the problem I am facing.
I have put it into an enclosure that had a drive with the identical model number... I was fully expecting this to work but it didn't.

At the end of the article it says:

1. Put the drive back where it was formatted. If it was the enclosure, put it back into the enclosure. If the drive was connected to a SATA port of a desktop PC, connect it back to the SATA port.
2. Copy data someplace away.
3. Put the drive where you intend to use it.
4. Re-partition and reformat the drive to match the new sector size.

Can anyone fill in the details for me?
As in, if I have the room, how can i actually get the data in a format that i can read ?

Put it into original external enclosure.
If you want to use it without original enclosure, you have to repartition and reformat the drive.

You can read here about, why that happens.
https://www.klennet.com/notes/2018-04-14-usb-and-sector-size.aspx

 

[SkyNetRising]

I have put it into an enclosure that had a drive with the identical model number... I was fully expecting this to work but it didn't.

Enclosure has to be the same. Drive model doesn't matter.

There are different enclosures. Some use 4k sectors, some use 512byte sectors.

 

[yurt66]

Enclosure has to be the same. Drive model doesn't matter.

There are different enclosures. Some use 4k sectors, some use 512byte sectors.

Thanks for your help, it's quite a relief to hear from someone who is aware of the problem.

I don't think I have the original enclosure.

Is there any software solution to this issue?

EDIT: I found this: https://superuser.com/questions/156...ctors-formatted-using-an-enclosure-that-trans
And they refer to a program called Testdisk that seems to be able to do the translation.
Does anyone know of any alternatives that might be able to actually mount the drive in a Windows environment?
Thanks

 

[fzabkar]

DMDE will mount the drive as a virtual volume.

https://dmde.com/

That said, I can't understand why R-Studio managed to recover nothing. You should at least have been able to see your files.

 

[yurt66]

DMDE will mount the drive as a virtual volume.

https://dmde.com/

That said, I can't understand why R-Studio managed to recover nothing. You should at least have been able to see your files.

Great, thank you! TestDisk worked well but it would be nice to have it in a familiar interface.
Yes, I was shocked when R-Disk found nothing - and I mean absolutely nothing apart from knowing (or assuming) there were partitions there - absolutely zero files, just guesses of filetypes from random fragments. R-Disk has always been perfect for me over the last 20 years up until this point.

Appreciate all the help on this forum
Cheers