unrecognizable hard drive

[mascoli124]

After a power outage Win 7 will not recognize my usb hdd. It's a 3TB Seagate Barracuda 3000. It shows in device mgr. but not in explorer. There is no drive letter associated with it. Computer management does not see it. I've tried 3rd party data recovery and partitioning software, but no one sees it. Drive worked fine until the power glitch. PC went down, rebooted and no drive. Running Win 7 on an HP a6603w. Tried different usb ports and different power plugs. Removed it from it's case, hooked it up inside the PC, same results. Is ther something else I can try. Right now I just want to format it to reuse. I don't need a 3TB door stop.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hello mascoli124, that is most unfortunate to have the drive encounter this problem after a power outage. You may format using Diskpart Clean.

It is also a good idea to have a good back up plan. The conventional wisdom by tech experts on backups is known as the 3-2-1 method.

Basically you want:

3 copies of any data you don't want to lose
2 different mediums it's stored on (so 2 different drives in your computer, for example)
1 copy kept offsite, to prevent against disaster.

Best of luck.

 

[mascoli124]

Hello mascoli124, that is most unfortunate to have the drive encounter this problem after a power outage. You may format using Diskpart Clean.

It is also a good idea to have a good back up plan. The conventional wisdom by tech experts on backups is known as the 3-2-1 method.

Basically you want:

3 copies of any data you don't want to lose
2 different mediums it's stored on (so 2 different drives in your computer, for example)
1 copy kept offsite, to prevent against disaster.

Best of luck.

 

[mascoli124]

Unfortunately Disk Part Clean did not work. It said it cleaned, but the drive is still unrecognizable to windows. Still unable to assign a drive letter. Someone said to try Seagate Disk Wizard. That, however, couldn't even see the drive.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hi mascoli124, terrible news. Another thing you can try is runnng Seatools. Running Disk Wizard wont help. Did you check to see if the drive was detected in BIOS?

 

[mascoli124]

Hi mascoli124, terrible news. Another thing you can try is runnng Seatools. Running Disk Wizard wont help. Did you check to see if the drive was detected in BIOS?

 

[mascoli124]

Yes I did check. It does not show up. I was so involved with this I never checked out the rest of my system. I was running 3 Seagate drive and two WD drives on my PC. The WD's are fine, but all three of the Seagates evidentially didn't do so well. They are all the same, inaccessible, with no drive letter assigned, and not showing up anywhere. I think I'll be staying with Western Digital from now on.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hello mascoli124, go into disk management and assign them a drive letter. If need be, you can contact support here.

 

[mascoli124]

Thank you everyone for your help. I have an update. A friend offered to look at the drive and brought it to his house. He is running Win 10. Plugged it in and Win 10 saw it and gave it a drive letter. It showed in device manager, computer management, and file manager. However, comp. mgmt. says its file system is RAW. While I've already told myself I've lost all the files on the drive, I would still like to reuse the drive. Windows will not format it. any suggestions?

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hi mascoli124, try Disk Part Clean or Disk Wizard. Let us know how it went.

 

[mascoli124]

Hi mascoli124, try Disk Part Clean or Disk Wizard. Let us know how it went.

 

[mascoli124]

When I try to execute the program with the drive plugged in the pc hangs. If I start the program and then plug in the drive the program becomes unresponsive.

 

[seagate_surfer]

mascoli124, did you try it on your friends computer? If the result is the same, most likely there is a HW defect on the drive that wont let you format it.