Question How do I get my external HDD back?

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Beachhead1985

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Jan 20, 2020
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I said I'd be back and after trying the three things I know how to do; I am!

So, short version: I had a drive crash and everything I tried to fix it failed. Now my external HDD doesn't work.

Part of this was running OpenSuperClone, trying to mirror my damaged drive onto a new
WD Easystore external drive. With a trip coming up and not being keen on leaving it running for 165+ days to go in the time left bar, I aborted the operation, leaving a partial mirror on my external WD.
OSC led me to believe that it's program allowed this as a come-back option; so I could come back later and pick up where I left off if I wanted.

Problem: I cannot view the external on my PC, laptop or OSC's Linnux OS. Does not even appear as an option. My DVD drive reads as blank w/o a disc, this isn't the same thing.

It still shows up in my eject options, but I couldn't fix it through mapping a network drive, adding a network location or any tools I know in disc management (where it also does not show up).

Can someone tell me what to do here?

Thank you.

Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-D3H motherboard w. 32gb ram
AMD A6-6400K APU with Radeon
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super
Win 10
 
Beachhead1985 said:
Can someone tell me what to do here?
Click to expand...
Presumably you can't restore the files from alternative backup locations and this disk contained your only copy.🙁

If so and the data is vital, consider spending big bucks and take the drive to a professional recovery agency. They may offer to investigate the problem for free, then tell you how much it will cost and the chances of success.

They may have to source an identical donor hard disk and swap the platters out of your dead drive into their working drive in a special clean room. This all adds to the cost if your drive's read/write heads, actuators, motor, pcb, etc., have failed.
 
logainofhades said:
The drive doesn't even show up in Disk Management?
Click to expand...
I feel like an idiot, but after a restart, now it is. Can't explain it. There is just one more disk showing this time than when I booted it up the other day.

Options here aren't familiar to me though.

I can convert it to a dynamic disk, format it, delete the healthy volume or make a new simple volume from the unallocated part.
 
Beachhead1985 said:
I can convert it to a dynamic disk, format it, delete the healthy volume or make a new simple volume from the unallocated part.
Click to expand...
You do any of that and you will loose all data on the drive.

What kind of drive is it? Is there an option to remove it from the external case and plug it in internally. It very well could be the external caddie that went bad.
 
faalin said:
You do any of that and you will loose all data on the drive.

What kind of drive is it? Is there an option to remove it from the external case and plug it in internally. It very well could be the external caddie that went bad.
Click to expand...
I've given up on the data. it's a partial image from a crashed drive that I don't have 165 days to let it complete.

I don't think I could shuck it without wrecking the case and I'd rather keep it as external to use as my external backup drive.
 
Misgar said:
It's probably a sensible option to leave well alone if the disk's still under warranty, but it is sometimes possible to shuck a drive without breaking the fragile tabs. You have to know where to fit the spudger.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Shuck+a+WD+Elements+External+Hard+Drive/137646
Click to expand...
It's literally brand-new. I just bought it to return to a more-responsible backup regimen of having a separate backup drive, external to my PC.

I also needed an external to try and save any data from my crashed drive, but like I said 165+ days to try? Can't do that, obviously. So now I just want the external drive viable to make my backup.
 
Beachhead1985 said:
I feel like an idiot, but after a restart, now it is. Can't explain it. There is just one more disk showing this time than when I booted it up the other day.

Options here aren't familiar to me though.

I can convert it to a dynamic disk, format it, delete the healthy volume or make a new simple volume from the unallocated part.
Click to expand...
Windows disk management kind of sucks. There is another program you can use. It will avoid disk management entirely. I can't remember the name of the program. Give me a chance to find it. Please be careful in disk management, you can lose your data.

Use this

dmde-4-0-6-806-win64-gui

I need to use it myself to recover data from a hard drive on an old laptop. I have used it for other drives as well.
 
Last edited:
Beachhead1985 said:
Pretty sure it's Disk-5, but I'd think that as an external, it would show as removable like Disk-6, which i am trying to use as a system backup.
Click to expand...
It seems, you're not showing entire Disk Management screenshot. Do not crop the screenshot.
There are probably more drives.

Please list model names/capacities of all your drives.
Show screenshot from Device Manager (with disk drives section expanded).
I can not understand, which is easystore drive, clone source drive, clone target drive.

Disk 5 is 16TB drive. Is that your easystore drive?
Disk 6 is 32GB. Probably USB fash drive.
 
Last edited:
SkyNetRising said:
It seems, you're not showing entire Disk Management screenshot. Do not crop the screenshot.
There are probably more drives.

Please list model names/capacities of all your drives.
Show screenshot from Device Manager (with disk drives section expanded).
I can not understand, which is easystore drive, clone source drive, clone target drive.

Disk 5 is 16TB drive. Is that your easystore drive?
Disk 6 is 32GB. Probably USB fash drive.
Click to expand...
You've got the whole vertical there. It's cropped on the side because it's just the normal menu tree for PC management on the side.

Disk 5 is the easystore, yes. And 6 is the USB I am trying to turn into a backup in another thread.
 
SkyNetRising said:
SkyNetRising said:
I have no idea, what "vertical" means in this context.

Are there any more drives listed, if you scroll Disk Management window down?
What are model names of all your drives?
Can you show screenshot from Device Manager - disk drives section expanded?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

I mean that while I cropped it, horizontally; I did not crop it vertically. You have all the data displayed up and down. I just eliminated the menus. There are no other drives, as such.

https://imgur.com/a/6BkSLm7
View: https://imgur.com/a/6BkSLm7


Here are the drives labelled. I found I got different data if I clicked on the partitions, vs the drive names and that clarified that yes, the drive with the partition is my easystore. I also found a clue as to the issue at play.

You should have both imgur files, there, if not I will repost. But it says something on the drive was not migrated due to a partial or ambiguous match. Likely an artifact of trying to mirror from my failed drive?
 
Beachhead1985 said:
Here are the drives labelled. I found I got different data if I clicked on the partitions, vs the drive names and that clarified that yes, the drive with the partition is my easystore.
Click to expand...
Ah Ok. That was optical disk drive hidden before.

Beachhead1985 said:
Problem: I cannot view the external on my PC, laptop or OSC's Linnux OS. Does not even appear as an option.
Can someone tell me what to do here?
Click to expand...
Delete 3275GB partition on 16TB drive and
create a single large partition across entire drive.
Format it and assign a drive letter.
Note - all data on it will be lost. Since it was an interrupted clone, data would not be usable anyway.
 
Last edited:
SkyNetRising said:
Ah Ok. That was optical disk drive hidden before.


Delete 3275GB partition on 16TB drive and
create a single large partition across entire drive.
Format it and assign a drive letter.
Note - all data on it will be lost. Since it was an interrupted clone, data would not be usable anyway.
Click to expand...
Because it's removable, do I want to assign a drive letter or drive path? I don't get why it reads my USB as removable, but not my external drive, which is accessed through a USB.
 
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