Question WD 1TB Black drive for storage now shows invalid.

[i6pwr]

I have used this drive originally as my C drive and few years ago. I have now designated it to storage as an external drive. I have used it a few times with my Sabrent DS-UFNC desktop reader/cloning device.

Now when I load it up, it shows as Dynamic and Invalid in DIsk Manager.

I tried to reactivate but I get the message "This operation is not allowed in the invalid disk part.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[fzabkar]

Can you show us the Partitions tab in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/

 

[dwd999]

Perhaps the Sabrent power supply is not functioning properly. Is this the HDD or m.2 version of that drive? If HDD does the drive appear to spin up normally?

 

[i6pwr]

Can you show us the Partitions tab in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/

I can when I get back to the PC later tonight.

Perhaps the Sabrent power supply is not functioning properly. Is this the HDD or m.2 version of that drive? If HDD does the drive appear to spin up normally?

The Sabrent is working good, I have 4 of these drives, two 1TB WD Black, and two WD 320GB Blue. All four are platter HDD. One black and one blue were not activated, I formatted one Blue drive which had little on it, but the 1TB Black has alot of files. The 2 drives that are activated work fine, even my 2 SSD drives work in the Sabrent.

No jumpers are used on any of the HDD's.

 

[i6pwr]

Can you show us the Partitions tab in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/

Sorry for the delay, my first time using this, let me know if this is what you need. More specifically, the drive is a WD Caviar Black 1TB WD1002FAEX

https://imgur.com/a/9yHrvps

 

[fzabkar]

The LDM partition is dynamic (partition ID = 42h).

If you d-click New Volume and expand the $Root, do you see your file/folder structure?

If so, then you could r-click and Recover your files to another drive.

Alternatively, you could use the following guide to remove the LDM (42) partition and insert the NTFS partition (New Volume):

https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/index/dmde_insert_partition_guide/

Note that there are numerous online guides for converting a dynamic partition to basic, but these all appear to be data destructive. Our procedure only affects sector 0, and it has a rollback option. The procedure does not touch your data.

 

[dwd999]

As a last resort I always check these things outside of the Windows environment. I boot from a usb containing a Linux Mint distro and examine the situation under Linux just in case its more of a Windows problem than a disk problem.

 

[i6pwr]

If you d-click

I assume this is "R" c;ick?

I just want to be sure as this program is new to me and I don't want to mess this up. I'm fine with copying to another drive but again, I want to ask as many questions as I can to not lose any data.

 

[i6pwr]

I assume this is "R" c;ick?

I just want to be sure as this program is new to me and I don't want to mess this up. I'm fine with copying to another drive but again, I want to ask as many questions as I can to not lose any data.

Ok, NM... I have the drive open and can see all the files as I remember them in the DMDE. I'm reading the reddit link you posted and with sweaty palms moving forward...lol.

 

[i6pwr]

@fzabkar Before click 'Insert", can I make a copy or image of the folders onto another drive first? if so , what are the steps? Thanks again.

 

[i6pwr]

Where I'm at is before I press 'Insert" do I have the 'new Volume" checked or the Disk 1 highlighted? If I select the "New Volume" then press "Insert", I get this message:

https://imgur.com/a/s55deDo

 

[fzabkar]

Yes, remove the LDM (42) partition. DMDE will offer to save the current partition structure to an undo log file.

If you wish to back up your data to another drive before proceeding with the edit, you will need to r-click and Recover. However, the free version of DMDE is limited to 4000 files of any size from any one folder per click. The standard version (US$20) can do the entire $Root in one go.

 

[USAFRet]

Whatever the outcome of this drive and data, please take this as a wakeup to institute a good backup routine.

Given that, this would have been a trivially easy fix, and you would have been done in a hour.

 

[i6pwr]

Whatever the outcome of this drive and data, please take this as a wakeup to institute a good backup routine.

Given that, this would have been a trivially easy fix, and you would have been done in a hour,

Absolutely, and I have made many backups. This drive is actually the archived drive and my 2nd backup is currently on a WD Passport. I was just going through my drives to ensure I did have backups only to find what I did.

The standard version (US$20) can do the entire $Root in one go

I'm fine with $20...definitely worth the security and ease of the process

 

[i6pwr]

If you wish to back up your data to another drive before proceeding with the edit, you will need to r-click and Recover

I would like to backup just in case. So in this instance, do this before I proceed with the above pictured process of removing the overlap?

 

[fzabkar]

Are you comfortable with booting to Linux? It may be that Linux can see your dynamic volume.

In fact, is there any reason why you can't just temporarily connect it as an internal drive in your new computer?

 

[fzabkar]

I would like to backup just in case. So in this instance, do this before I proceed with the above pictured process of removing the overlap?

Yes.

 

[i6pwr]

Are you comfortable with booting to Linux? It may be that Linux can see your dynamic volume.

In fact, is there any reason why you can't just temporarily connect it as an internal drive in your new computer?

I don't really want to go down the Linux road atm, but didn't think about connecting to a sata port on the MB. I am cloning the drive right now but that's actually a viable option just to see.

 

[i6pwr]

I did try to connect to the MB and view the files but still shows invalid.

I was able to recover all the files onto a spare drive so now if I can reactivate the drive that would be great, worst case is I could re-format and just copy the files, but would like to get my feet wet with this program now.

I followed the steps in the reddit link through step 8, used 'Primary Partition as shown in the box also, but the disk is still invalid. Maybe I missed a step but at least the data is safe so we can keep trying for I guess training purposes.


Current status:

Drive "D" is the target drive for the recovery, not the problem drive.

https://imgur.com/a/ZJpFtQP