Drive seen in Computer Management but not in explorer

[thestrangebrew1]

A friend dropped an external hdd and it's not showing up when we plug it in. It does spin, but it doesn't show up or is recognized as a mass storage device. When I go to disc manager, it shows up as an unknown disc. It says Disk 2, unallocated 134217728.00GB. When I right click it, everything's greyed out except for properties and help. If I right click the area where it says disk 2, I get options for initialize, offline, properties or help. Initializing is not what I want because we need the data off of it, I'm assuming initializing would reformat.

I'm thinking this drive is pretty much fubar'd, but should I run checkdisk or start looking into data recovery options? I've never done either, so I'm wondering, how would I know what drive to tell checkdisk to look at if there's no letter assigned? TIA

 

[Bubbaleone]

What model and interface is the external drive? It's doubtful the drive itself was damaged by the impact; typically they're built to withstand impacts of 400 Gs. What is easily damaged are the soldered connections to the USB port. I'd first try removing the drive from the housing and connect the SATA port directly to the PC to test if it's recognized in Disk Management and the files visible in Explorer (be sure a drive letter is assigned in order to see the files).

 

[denis280]

OUTCH! dropping hdd.it don't sound to good.i would start by checking the wires.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

What model and interface is the external drive? It's doubtful the drive itself was damaged by the impact; typically they're built to withstand impacts of 400 Gs. What is easily damaged are the soldered connections to the USB port. I'd first try removing the drive from the housing and connect the SATA port directly to the PC to test if it's recognized in Disk Management and the files visible in Explorer (be sure a drive letter is assigned in order to see the files).

It's SATA interface, not sure of the model but I took it out of the enclosure and it's a WD 1TB green drive.

I've tried getting my pc to recognize this drive a few different ways:

Removing the drive and unscrewing the interface from it and inserting the drive into a dock. USB plug sound goes off, no drive letter, and disk management shows the disk as unpartitioned (the first post above basically).

Using ubuntu live cd, the hard drive is not shown in devices so it's not mounted. When I run disk utility, it shows the drive, but unpartitioned. When I try to run a bench I get errors.

I screw the interface back onto the drive, plug in the power, and connect the usb outside of the enclosure. I get the USB sound, still no drive in explorer, and now the drive does not appear in disk management.

I once again try ubuntu live cd, same thing, except now in disk utility, the drive shows up, but it's now reading as a 2.2 WD external hard. Still can't run a bench, getting errors.

The only thing I haven't tried is physically installing this drive into my rig to see if it's recognized that way, but it seems kinda pointless at this stage. May work on it tomorrow, but I'm thinking this drive is toast. Just weird because when I right click the usb icon to eject, it recognizes that there's an ext. hdd in windows.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Try opening an elevated command prompt and see what diskpart reports the drive as. You didn't mention the circumstances, but if the drive was powered when it got dropped it may be that the MBR and MFT were damaged which would make the drive "appear" as if it's unintialized, when in fact all the data files are still intact and recoverable.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

I've already put it back in the enclosure for the night. I'll give this a shot over the wknd and report back. I'm beat & its time to spend some qt with the wife.

Edit: I'll ask my friend if she had the device on when it fell.

 

[Matt1970]

He dropped it, it's fubar. Toss it before it take other devices with it like your external caddy or worse.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

Try opening an elevated command prompt and see what diskpart reports the drive as. You didn't mention the circumstances, but if the drive was powered when it got dropped it may be that the MBR and MFT were damaged which would make the drive "appear" as if it's unintialized, when in fact all the data files are still intact and recoverable.

Drive's not showing up in diskpart, but I'm able to see it as Disk 2 Unknown with 134217728GB unallocated space.

 

[Big Roger]

can't you go into recovery and get a command prompt and try fixmbr?

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/17521-how-fix-mbr-through-command-prompt.html

 

[thestrangebrew1]

According to my friend, she said the edd wasn't being accessed when it was dropped. It was plugged into the wall, but not to her laptop. Her daughter bumped it and it fell.

As far as trying to fix the mbr, maybe I'm missing something. If the drive is just a data drive, photos, videos etc., is there an mbr on this hard drive? Does every drive, regardless of the data on it (OS or otherwise) contain an mbr? This is new territory for me so I'm using this as a learning opportunity.

 

[Matt1970]

can't you go into recovery and get a command prompt and try fixmbr?

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/17521-how-fix-mbr-through-command-prompt.html

If it were just a corrupted Master Boot Record, you would still see the partition. I would love to be wrong for strangebrews sake, but this tells me the drive is dead:

When I go to disc manager, it shows up as an unknown disc. It says Disk 2, unallocated 134217728.00GB. When I right click it, everything's greyed out except for properties and help.

 

[Steltek]

I'm kind of leaning towards Matt1970's thinking here. If the drive was powered when it fell, the heads might not have been parked which can (and apparently did, in this case) result in really-bad-things happening to the drive.

Have you tried a utility like Recuva or Testdisk on it to see if it finds anything in the unallocated space? If it does find files, I'd image the drive and try do run a recovery from the image itself instead of the original drive.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

I'm kind of leaning towards Matt1970's thinking here. If the drive was powered when it fell, the heads might not have been parked which can (and apparently did, in this case) result in really-bad-things happening to the drive.

Have you tried a utility like Recuva or Testdisk on it to see if it finds anything in the unallocated space? If it does find files, I'd image the drive and try do run a recovery from the image itself instead of the original drive.

Running recuva only sees 2 drives (my 2 that are in my rig) and not the ext. hd. I'll try testdisk and see what comes up but it's really not looking good.

 

[Confused007]

Iam facing similar issue , unallocated 134217728.00GB..what does that mean . please help

Welcome to our forums.
This post was last active almost
5 years ago.

If you need help with a computer problem,
please create a new thread.

AT Mod Usandthem