2TB Black HDD Failure

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

My WD 2TB Black HDD cannot be read. At least I have not figured out how to. It is recognized but as a compact flash drive. I can feel and hear it spinning but in it’s properties it shows zero amount of storage space. I would like to get my files off of this drive. I have an RMA in place and would like to get the files before I send the drive back. 

Mark

2

Hi,

Is the drive showing in the disk management? If so, how is the drive showing?

Have you tried using a data recovery software?

3

Hello, 

You should try to Format the drive using The disk manager for windows, You should also try running a test on the drive using the Data Life Guard software provided by WD to see if the drive is defective, you might have corrupted the partitions. I suggest doing a Complete Zeroing of the drive. 

By,

Oscar.

4

osnu1008 wrote:

Hello, 

 

You should try to Format the drive using The disk manager for windows, You should also try running a test on the drive using the Data Life Guard software provided by WD to see if the drive is defective, you might have corrupted the partitions. I suggest doing a Complete Zeroing of the drive. 

 

By,

Oscar.

Why would you suggest zeroing or formatting when he clearly wants to get his files back before RMA???

Mark, try downloading good tool like R-studio (demo version will let you see if the drives contents are accessible, if they are just pay 70$ or whatever it cost and get your files out)

5

i used Paragon Partitiion Manager’s volume explorer feature to export all my files off a 1tb drive a while back… i was having corrupt data issues randomly / drive issues and i wanted to try and format my drive and re-install windows which i have done a million times in the last decade or so…

But the Windows 7 install DVD was bad (Win7x64 With SP1 Media Refresh version / Digital River)

No matter what i did that version of the install cd/dvd would fail so i resorted to my MSDN version of the disc that included SP1 and install went fine but the problem was on the last install attempt the Media Refresh version disc i used screwed up my partitions… i had tried to delete only one partition and had a secondary one holding backed up data but the install cd wiped out all the partitions even though i specificy selected delete and format on just the one and also the install cd froze during format so i had to hit the restart button… which we should all know that ain’t gonna be good lol

SO…

I tried a few commonly used tools to recover and fix the partitions and they all failed…

I tried “TestDisk” and that failed too. I’m talking a 8hrs a day for a week of mentally ill persistence lol

I would try various partition tools and do some checking with TestDisk to see what it would say afterwards and nothing did end up working fully but a TestDisk got the closest of any tool i tried to fix things. with a combo of fiddling and restoring only the partition i wanted i could get TestDisk to report the partition was good and i’d boot windows and it would still not show up… Their tech support had nothing too say to me except the obvious noob **bleep** **bleep** i learned a decade ago and was a waste of time.

Basiclly i think what happened was a the wrong sector sizes were written into the partition table record and that is why i was able to get the one i wanted *almost fixed but if i chose fix them all etc it wouldn’t work… i noticed over lapping sector address’s and inconsistencies in what was reported during different repair jobs with different tools… i was logging all sector’s size’s, locations etc through out my testing…

So at some point I had enough and went into repair mode…

Millions of tools are on the net free or not doesn’t matter they all do the same thing with a different gui as far as i’m concerned. They do a huge massive time consuming scan and then you get an option usually as to what you want to save and then you select the 1 file you want or sometimes multiple files and select save… the file is saved where you want after a varied amount of time (depends hom many you picked etc) and the usual procedure is you get a your files with NO file names and you never getto keep the original directory structure (which can be just as important as the files them selves !)

Each program i tried would take about 5 to 8 hrs to scan my 1tb drive if I Ididn’t interupt the process and if i wanted to select more or start over guess what ? another 5 to 8 hrs wait again and i went through this is few times and again figured ok this is retarded and i’ve had enough lol

I opened paragon partition manager… i knew it could SEE my partitions already because i had tried a bunch of times to mount my partitions after a pratition repair attempt…  i opened the volume explorer feature and hit the plus sign at the top to expand the view of the partition directory structure and then kept dong that to expand out all the folders on the drive i was interested in (there was no waiting)

I selected what folders i wanted and selected export and the files were copied out of the partion to another hard drive at my full speed data rasnfer speed my drive was capable of… I fogot i wanted more files and opened it up and exported some more …again with no waiting. INSTANT access !

Its worth noting that this can be done with any kind of partion… Linux, Windows, Mac doesn’t matter…

I was already a fan of the program but this impressed me !

So i had a terabyte exported and windows reinstalled in a small fraction of the time i would be using on crappy so called repair tools…

TestDisk is great by the way goes beyond what all the one click noob tools can do and its free. They have tutorials for people on their wiki page and a support forum you can get help and it has a file recovery option too but i never used it (it does what they all do / no folder saving or file name saving)

It has a console gui but don’t let that scare you the program is very powerful and smart !

Its already integrated into Hirens Boot CD but you can put the .exe on any dos boot cd or run it from windows also.

This i think is valuable info from my experience becuase i found an instant way to drag and drop my lost files at extreme high speed while retaining my folder structure and file names… with NO 8 hour pre scan lol

And that was a 1 tb jeez it might be more like 12 hrs per recovery attempt on a 2tb drive :frowning:

Only draw back is Paragon Partition Manager is not free and i don’t know if they have a trial etc.

Also many of their programs have the built in volume explorer function… i used it first in like '05 or something, as long as the program has advanced partition edit functions the volume explorer will be there too ! I mention this because Paragon make a lot of variations of their drive software and many do the same thing pretty much but have a different name.

maybe i gave you or others some ideas ?

Good luck !