Toshiba Canvio External Hard Drive 3.0 3T in RAW format.

[Justinlenee]

I have a Toshiba Canvio External Hard Drive 3.0 3T. Yesterday i came home got on my computer and the drive no longer was showing up on my computer. I checked the device manager and it shows in that section but when i check disk management it shows the drive in :/J. It gives me an error saying i must format the drive in order for the drive to work but i can't do that because i need the information on the drive. It also is showing that the drive is in RAW format. Any ideas on what i can do to fix this? : /

 

[DSzymborski]

At this point, you need to use some data recovery software -- I personally like Recuva for this -- to see what is recoverable from your hard drive.

And then cross your fingers that this is an easy lesson rather than a tough one; any data you care about losing should never, ever, be stored in only one location.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Justinlenee,

I would totally agree with DSzymborski. You can look for a data recovery tool for RAW drives.
Once you recover the data, it would be nice to test the drive, so you can see if it is in a healthy state.
Use some of these: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

See if there are some pending/reallocated and uncorrectable sectors.

Let us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[Justinlenee]

I tried two different recovery software's yesterday and they both just stay on o% when loading or they say the drive is the wrong file type. I'm thinking everything might be gone i ran a chkdsk and everything was coming back undreadable : /

Hi there Justinlenee,

I would totally agree with DSzymborski. You can look for a data recovery tool for RAW drives.
Once you recover the data, it would be nice to test the drive, so you can see if it is in a healthy state.
Use some of these: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

See if there are some pending/reallocated and uncorrectable sectors.

Let us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD