Drives de-formatting constantly!

[Modelworks]

"GPT help" lists:
required
no drive letter
hidden
shadow copy
and read only

The first one is the only one I would try, but what's the point? How is setting the attributes supposed to repair the GPT? The problem is there is no volume, so I can't even give this command. I am required to "select a volume" first anyway.

If there are no volumes when you use select disk, then detail disk , the GPT header is gone. You can restore it from the last sector of the drive using a hex editor. If that copy is gone then you will need to use DISKPART to create the volumes again. Creating the volume will not destroy the data, it just adds an entry in the table. Make them the exact same size they were before. Then use GPT and UNIQUEID command to put the correct ID for each partition back into the table. You have to tell DISKPART what each partition is for because it has no way of knowing without the headers , so if it is an EFI partition you have to tell DISKPART that and it will set in the headers.

 

[VERTIGGO]

I've gotten past the convert dynamic and create volume part.

Can I find out the exact size the volume was before?

What is the "correct ID"?

Please forgive me, I'm not an expert and documentation for this kind of thing just doesn't seem to exist... at least not that google can find.

 

[VERTIGGO]

Right now I have gdisk showing:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present

With the v command it detects 3 partitions with the third being a "data" partition, but in disk manager it still shows "healthy, RAW".

EDIT: on reboot disk manager shows the correct partition name that I had before, but the drive is still dynamic, and so it doesn't mount. It also is only seeing about 30 of the files that were there, i.e. almost nothing. I could scan with a file recovery program, but it's still a "dynamic" disk (gold) and "reactivate" is grayed out.

So, I'm currently scanning with Recuva, and may or may not find most of my files. I intend to copy them to a new 3tb drive. However, is there anything I should do to prevent this? Is there a simple means of backing up the GPT, protective MBR and disk structure to an external file?

EDIT #2 Recuva found 16,000 files but only about 100 of them were "recoverable". Fortunately the 2TB I lost weren't important, but that doesn't change the fact that I've been screwed royally by useless hardware. I plan to disk check it and reformat, but I'd really like to have some sort of preparative measure ready for the next time this happens...

 

[VERTIGGO]

Well after wiping the drive and using it for a month, and restoring a few thousand GB of data from remote sources, it just randomly "went RAW" again. I'm back to the beginning again seemingly with no way to solve this and no explanation why these GPT drives are so prone to committing suicide.

There goes another 50 days of hard work in a split second... #$%# I want to punch something right now...

and, by the way, this is after completely replacing my PC's components, motherboard, RAM, cpu, and PSU...

 

[VERTIGGO]

UPDATE: Just bought another 3TB from Hitachi. This one is a new model (even looks a bit different from old drives). Plugged it into SATA controller (never used it in SAS like other examples), installed, formatted, and ran a disk check overnight, no problems.

Then, after I re-imaged my SSD (routine reversion of C: drive to a backup from 2 months ago), the 3TB immediately showed unformatted and asked to choose MBR or GPT. Thankfully I hadn't put anything on it yet, but wtf? These things are just ticking time bombs!!! They're more fragile than King Tut at the south pole!