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Disk not initialized?

S

stuckinasquare3

Senior member
Hey guys, just got a new mobo. I had a sata drive in my old mobo that I used for backup data, however in disk management it's now showing up as unallocated which doesn't make sense. How do I get this drive working with the new motherboard?
 
Like what? My old rig had three data drives. One for the os and two other internal drives. With the new motherboard one of the two data drives is recognized just fine but the other isn't. When I go to disk management (windows 7) I can see that the system knows that the disk is plugged in. It's just reported as not initialized. And it says that the space is all unallocated. I'm not sure what to do. The disk has important stuff on it
 
Try it in the old PC. If it sees it OK, copy it off ASAP. If it doesn't, you need to try to work to recover the partition table, which somehow got ruined. I usually use Testdisk, but some swear by Easeus.

Of course, if it were actually used for backup, you could reinitialize it, reformat it, and copy all the data that was on it back to it from another copy. If important data only exists on it, then it's not being used for backup.
 
Well I'm getting a message "no partition found or selected for recovery" after running testdisk. I don't understand what could have happened...it worked just fine
 
the weird thing is, windows is showing it as a "Intel RAID 0 volume". But I wasn't running it in RAID. Is there a bios setting I could have messed up somehow?
 
stuckinasquare3 said:
Is test disk free?
Click to expand...
Yes, capital-F Free, even.
Is it easy to recover partition table without losing data?
Click to expand...
So long as you have the HDD copied to another HDD, yes. That, however, is the case with any recovery attempt. You want the drive's contents cloned to another drive before you start.

the weird thing is, windows is showing it as a "Intel RAID 0 volume". But I wasn't running it in RAID. Is there a bios setting I could have messed up somehow?
Click to expand...
Did you have RAID enabled on the prior PC?

Is the previous desktop dead? If not, can you try it in that machine?

Also, was the previous OS a Pro or Ultimate, and the new one Home?
 
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I did not have RAID enabled on old PC. I bought this motherboard used so it may have had RAID enabled but I went into the bios and didn't see that raid was enabled. The old PC is indisposed at the moment so I can't test in it. Even more interesting, Windows thinks the drive is 1.5TB but it's actually half that, 750GB. Must have something to do with it thinking it's part of a RAID 0 array?

I went from Windows 7 to Windows 7. Same OS.
 
The "same OS" and as in the same license? Windows 7 comes in several flavors, and not all like dynamic disks. The 750GB/1.5TB bit is interesting, though.
 
Same license. I'm not exactly sure which version of Windows 7 it was. Either Home Premium or Professional. Full disclosure, I use a recovery software called ShadowProtect so what I actually did was run a hardware independent recovery so that I wouldn't have to reinstall the OS. Basically it gives you basic drivers so you can boot into windows and then install the correct motherboard drivers. So it was the EXACT same OS because I didn't actually reinstall anything. I realize that most people recommend a new install but it seemed to work just fine and the problematic drive isn't one with an OS on it anyway.

That being said, I do have an image of the problematic drive, I just don't remember the last time I updated it. So I could theoretically format the drive and restore to it...however, I'm a little concerned that Windows thinks this drive is part of a RAID 0 and so I'm not sure what formatting it will even do.
 
For what it is worth, I also have used testdisk, and it has worked quite well.
If you got important data on it, it is better to clone the drive first, then use testdisk on the clone, and if it can't recover anything, you send the original drive to the pros to see what they can do.
 
stuckinasquare3 said:
How can I clone the disk if it's not recognized?
Click to expand...
If it shows up an a RAID member in disk management, it is being recognized, and something on it is being correctly read by Windows*, making it think it is a dynamic disk of some kind.

If it's the very same OS image, unless it was a RAID drive, and then you changed chipset brands, it should read it. That ruined that hypothesis. If you get a chance, try reading it in basically any other Windows PC.
 
What mobo is it, and what headers do you have connected. Do you have it hooked up via an external sata header? You may need to install the driver if so.

Also, just go into the bios and hit load optimized defaults first and see if that helps if you have it plugged into a native sata header.
 
Thinking back, it is possible that at some point I HAD run this drive in a raid configuration but I've since formatted the disk obviously and repurposed it. Is it possible that there's some hidden bit on it that was being ignored but now is not being ignored and so now the disk thinks its RAID again?
 
Teizo said:
What mobo is it, and what headers do you have connected. Do you have it hooked up via an external sata header? You may need to install the driver if so.

Also, just go into the bios and hit load optimized defaults first and see if that helps if you have it plugged into a native sata header.
Click to expand...

MSI Z87-G45 gaming. What do you mean by headers? The drive is plugged into one of the regular sata ports.
 
stuckinasquare3 said:
MSI Z87-G45 gaming. What do you mean by headers? The drive is plugged into one of the regular sata ports.
Click to expand...

You have a Z87 board. Ok. All the connectors are controlled by Intel then. The Z77 chipset has two Sata 3 connectors controlled by AsMedia and if you have a drive hooked up in it it won't read unless you install the AsMedia driver.
 
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The plot thickens. I've pulled the drive out of the machine and attached it via enclosure to my Mac. My Mac recognizes it just fine! And not as a RAID drive.
 
So what does this mean...I have new motherboard so the motherboard can't be thinking that the drive is in RAID. The drive itself knows what's on it when I connect it to another machine. Is it the windows OS itself?
 
Teizo said:
You have a Z87 board. Ok. All the connectors are controlled by Intel then. The Z77 chipset has two Sata 3 connectors controlled by AsMedia and if you have a drive hooked up in it it won't read unless you install the AsMedia driver.
Click to expand...

No Intel chipsets have Asmedia sata connectors integrated in them. Some motherboard makers add third party sata ports, but that goes for all chipsets, P67, Z77, Z87, etc.
 
stuckinasquare3 said:
So what does this mean...I have new motherboard so the motherboard can't be thinking that the drive is in RAID. The drive itself knows what's on it when I connect it to another machine. Is it the windows OS itself?
Click to expand...

Could be a bad sata port. Try another drive on it, just make sure it's one without important data on it.
 
I tried another sata port and another sata cable. I can't imagine that a bad sata port would make a hard drive think it's part of a RAID array. I just hooked up the drive to another PC using an enclosure and it works fine. I ran chkdsk on it and it seems ok.
 
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