Hard Drive with Issues (Expert help)

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Stormlifter

2[H]4U
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Oct 19, 2002
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I've got a hard drive, here is what I know about it thus far.

1) When I put it in a USB Enclosure the "Safely remove hardware" tray icon can identify the hard drive properly, but the drive doesn't show up in Administrator Tools or My Computer

2) When I put it in a computer I am unable to get it to show up, Computer Management (Local Disks) took about 6 minutes to poll it and it says "Not Initialized".

So... I've got a disk that I KNOW has data on it. A Windows installation and documents for sure. If I initialize it I'm pretty sure that'll scrap all data on it, but I'm not sure.

I've got SystemRescueCD ready (a linux boot environment) in case I need it.

What do you all think? Should I initialize it in Windows or try to see what Linux has to offer in terms of getting the data off it.

EDiT: just realized this may belong in Hard Drive Systems. But not sure so figured safe here.
 
As long as you don't format the disk or make or delete any partitions, it won't do anything, speaking from personal experience.

EDIT: Ahh. Not new drive. I'm awake :p

Yeah, it's toasty.
 
You're going to need a partition recovery tool. Something like Partition doctor. I would suggest downloading the latest image of MiniXPE (should be an ISO), burning it to disc, and booting from it. There's a hard disk utilities menu, and you'll want a partition recovery tool to scan the drive. Re-initializing it will adversely affect any chance of getting to the data that's on the disk. Sounds like the MBR went to hell, and/or it lost it's partition tables.
 
Alright, trying partition doc

Edit 1: Ran Partition Doc, said to run "Data Recovery Wizard" so we'll see what comes out of that.
 
LMK how it goes. I had a 40GB that I accidentally initialized on a different RAID controller that had all the pictures of my daighter since she was born (now 3), but partition doctor recovered the whole drive.
 
Empty, or so both Partition Doctor and Data Recovery Wizard.

Partition Doctor was unable to use Fix mode or whatever and told me to use Data Recovery Wizard, which concluded that there was no data AT ALL on the drive.

hrmmmmmm
 
i don't know if this would work or not, but i've used R-Tools to recover data on a bum HDD, maybe you should look into that program.

http://www.r-tt.com/
 
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