[Question] - Best Way to Recover Data on Unallocated HD?

[DCtx88]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone,

I have a Western Digital 1TB Black Caviar HD that got corrupted. Windows isnt detecting it unless I go to Disk Management, which wants to initialize it. I've used easeus data recovery in the past, and it has worked beautiful, but I cant get it to recognize the drive.

Here are some pictures:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/158596m5ramv36e/Photo%20Nov%2026%2C%207%2058%2019%20AM.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aytq7w9kh1m1uj0/Photo%20Nov%2026%2C%207%2058%2010%20AM.jpg?dl=0

So my question is whats the best way to at least get the drive detected without formatting? I want to try to recover as much data as I can.

I'm thinking I may need to get EaseUS Partition Master or some software that can probably assign it to a drive, but without erasing/formatting my data?

Thanks to any advice!

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, DCtx88.

Sorry to hear about the issues you've been having with your WD Black drive. How did the drive become corrupted? Did you hear any unusual sounds/noises coming from it, or did you experience slow read/write speeds, hangs/freezes of your system?
Unfortunately when a drive is shown as not initialized, chances are that most tools out there won't be able to detect it and that includes data recovery software as well. However here are a couple of links where you might be able to find something useful out of the whole bunch: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html and http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm. I'd also suggest that you try the drive with a different computer, or at least with a different SATA port and cables on yours, to see if the same thing happens. You could also try accessing it via Ubuntu Live USB/DVD to see if the HDD is properly recognized and if you can get to your files. The most reliable solutions remains a data recovery company: WD Data Recovery Partners.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[DCtx88]

Hi, I was using DBAN to clear out a external drive, but it was taking so long. Someone suggested I use the AUTONUKE option in DBAN, and when I did, i saw it was wiping out all of my drives. I immediately shut it down, and was able to recover all of the files on the primary hd, but the secondary one (above), is the one the computer is not recognizing.

I've tried a different computer, and on mac its saying it needs to be initialized.

Maybe I need to go the Ubuntu Live route?

I just need the computer to recognize it properly, and I bet EaseUs could recover it.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Oh, this changes things a bit. I'm not really familiar with that program, but it sounds like it already performed a low level format (a.k.a write zeros) on that HDD. After formatting a drive like that, you always have to initialize, partition and format it, as if it was a brand new internal HDD. Unfortunately this type of format makes it really really difficult (or impossible in some cases) to recover data. There's a bit of light at the end of the tunnel though. Having in mind it did that so fast, this means that it probably wasn't a full format as this would take a few hours for a 1TB drive. However if data recovery software can't do the job, I'd advise you to take a look at the link with WD's data recovery partner from my previous post.

Good luck mate, fingers crossed! Please keep me posted.