How to recover/fix my hard drive

zealous2120

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So when I got this 4tb hard drive, it looked something like this in Windows, https://imgur.com/IvJ6b18. Now when I was trying to install Windows with this 4tb hard drive (Which I shouldn't have been) I accidentally deleted the E drive which I think was important because now the E drive is gone, and the F drive is one partition, and it says that it is raw, what should I do?
 
Solution
This is going to be very messy and complicated.
Long story short - if you don't know how to use EASUS recovery or software similar, give the computer to a professional and pay them.
May sound a bit abrupt, but you got to have some basic computer knowledge to get things done.

But I think, you lost it all and since you dont know what it was, then you aren't missing it.

Cystash

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The E drive may have been just a recovery partition that windows made when it was installed. If the F drive is showing up as raw in the device manager, you should be able to right click on it and format it. If formatting it that way doesnt work you could use diskpart, its a command line tool built into windows.
 
Are you asking if you can get the Data back or are you saying you just want it all gone?
If you want it all gone go to -
Computer management,
Disk management
see the hard disk (and the separate E and F and see if they are on the same drive) It will have Disk 0, Disk 1, etc on left side showing its on one drive
Delete them with right click
and then you can format them into 1 big drive.
That is ONLY if that is what you want to do. I am a little confused from your question, because its not 100% clear.
 

zealous2120

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I want the E drive data back because I believe it may be valuable.
 

Cystash

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If the E drive was indeed a recovery partition of windows, then doing a system restore to an earlier time might bring it back? From the picture though, its such a small partition, thats the only thing i can think of that it would be.
 

zealous2120

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Also to be clear I wasn't able to install windows and when I tried to make the partition active when trying it said is couldm't because the Hard drive wasn't a fixed mbr disk or something like that.
 

Cystash

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Ok i am really confused, so you already had windows installed. You plugged in the 4tb hdd to the pc and booted into windows and you were able to take the screenshots of the C, E, and F drive. So where you trying to reinstall windows?
 

zealous2120

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No, ok so I have a PC already built with a 1tb drive. But the 1tb drive was going out so I took that out and was installing Windows on the new 4tb drive. When I was installing Windows from a bootable USB I accidentally deleted all that stuff on the E drive which is the 4tb hard drive. The F drive is also the 4tb hard drive. But when I deleted that stuff, it wouldn't let me install windows. So, I tried the diskpart stuff and made a new partition in the CMD in the install window still, and when I tried to make it active, it said I couldn't because the hard drive wasn't a "fixed MBR disk" So when I plugged the 1tb back in along with the 4 tb and the E drive is gone and in disk manager it says that it's raw. Also, when I took that screenshot I still had the 1tb and 4tb in before trying to install Windows/
 

Cystash

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Ok that makes a little more sence. Plug the 4tb back into the pc you want to install it in. Start up your bootable usb of windows, when you go to the part where it asks you where you would like to install windows, select custom, it should take you to a page where you can delete the partitions that are there, and allow windows to just make the partiton itself.
 

zealous2120

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Ok, but I don't want to use that 4tb hard drive for the os anymore, I just want that data back and have it like it was in the screenshot again.
 

Cystash

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Ok then what you need to do, is plug the 4tb drive into your current working pc. Download test disk and point it towards that 4tb and let it run, if there is anything to recovery it should find it. If it does not then we can move on to something more hardcore in trying to recover what was on the drive.
 

zealous2120

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Ok so test disk didn't work so I used easeus and recovered some files, now what?
 

Cystash

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Will easeus let you recover the files to your desktop? I wish i could remember the specific program i used for data recovery when i worked as a tech, it would recovery stuff from corrupted sectors even.
 

zealous2120

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Yes. But first, why did my 4tb hard drive have those to E and F drives in the first place, and what was even in the E drive?
 

Cystash

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Its hard to know, depending on where you got the 4tb from, it may have been previously used and they forgot to wipe it. That E drive was so small, it might have been a recovery partition, or if they were using linux it may have been a swap partition. There are tons of different things it could have been im kind of curious now as well.
 

zealous2120

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Well, I bought it new from Western Digital so...
 

Cystash

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Thats really weird unless it was a refurb, ive heard strange stories of things like that. Someone buys a brand new hard drive and it comes to them with stuff on it. Might have been a freak deal. What were you able to recover from the drive?
 

zealous2120

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Actually, nothing I accidentally did the other part of the drive, not the one I erased. The part that I did erase has absolutely nothing.
 

Cystash

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◉_◉ I am at an absolute loss then. I would just ignore it at this point then, probably wont be able to recovery anything. Or maybe there was nothing to recover? We have a mystery now! haha
 

zealous2120

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Ok, well also, why is there only 3726 gb and not 4tb?
 

zealous2120

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One question if you don't mind, so I fixed the "raw" hard drive by formatting it to NTFS and it says it allocated but it's not showing up in file explorer.
 
This is going to be very messy and complicated.
Long story short - if you don't know how to use EASUS recovery or software similar, give the computer to a professional and pay them.
May sound a bit abrupt, but you got to have some basic computer knowledge to get things done.

But I think, you lost it all and since you dont know what it was, then you aren't missing it.
 
Solution

Cystash

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Make sure that it shows up as online in the device manager, if its not online it wont show up in the file explorer.