Okay…
First you have to verify five things.
1) Is the drive spin-up when you apply power to the drive? If not you have a power supply/drive hardware problem. You cannot proceed to next step.
2) Make sure to disconnect all other ext. drives except the one you need to recover.
3) Drive spinning & USB connection ON. – Check hardware installation on XP/Vista/7 Device Manager. (Win Key + R on your keyboard and type devmgmt.msc on Run window. Device manager will open)
4) Expand Disk Drives and see your subjected Drive is listed there. If not you have connection or hardware issue and cannot proceed.
5) If listed, close device manager window.
6) Now open Disk Manager. (Win Key + R and type Diskmgmt.msc and hit enter)
7) On Disk Manager, look for your drive is listed. (If your drive is listed, you should see a disk showing closer to your drive size)
8) If your drive is okay, you should see it on BLUE heading.
9) If your drive is not properly setup, header will be BLACK.
10) If it is black and you cannot see a drive letter assigned e.g. (E:), right click on that drive area choose “Change Drive Latter or Path/Add drive letter. Proceed with the instructions on screen.
11) If you ware successful, you should be able to see your drive on the Windows explorer and use it.
If last step wasn’t successful, or drive itself is not initialized, then you’re in BIG trouble. But if you have no fear, there is an unorthodox way of recovering your data.
If you don’t care about your data and you just want to recover your drive? Follow these instructions.
Partition & Format Drives:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3865&p_created=1258601352&p_sid=JeFL3lkk&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_srch=1&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTEyLDExMiZwX3Byb2RzPSZwX2NhdHM9JnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9cGFydGlvbg!!&p_li=&p_topview=1
And if you want to recover your data and take the Red pill and go all the way… read on…
Disclaimer: Don’t hold me responsible if you lose your data for good! I have done this only once and it was successful.
1) Right click on your correct drive and choose delete partition (If it is portioned).
2) Quick Format using NTFS (default) and give a name you prefer. Once formatting is completed, you should see your drive in BLUE with drive letter & name assigned.
3) Now you should be able to see your drive in Windows explorer.
4) DON’T TRY TO COPY ANYTHING IN TO IT!
5) Now open Internet explorer and open Google and look for software named Active@Undelete. (You can do this before hand)
6) Get hold of full version and install on your Programs as you normally do.
7) Run Acive@Undelete and point to your USB newly partitioned & formatted drive.
8) Choose deep scan mode.
9) This will take long time depending on your drive size and report you with long list of files that can be recovered.
You can select multiple files and choose “Recover” to a different drive. (Not to the same drive)
Note: you’ll see some file/folders you have deleted long time back. You can ignore them and their health status may not be good. (overwritten) At least 90% or more files can be recovered in this way.
Good Luck… You need that.
Mabikay – SLK
P.S. Current version of Active @ Undelete can recover deleted partitions - Try that before you take the Red Pill.
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