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Storage HDD asking to be initialised when it has data on (Update)

Discussion in 'Tech Support' started by bnicholls195, 8 Mar 2012.

  1. bnicholls195

    bnicholls195 What's a Dremel?

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    Morining everyone,

    My 2tb WD drive has been working fine my desktop for months until today where it was not recognised in windows so i checked in disk management and it then asked me to be initialise it. I plugged in in to my external caddy and it is the same situation. Is there are a way to make it work without losing all the data?

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: 12 Mar 2012
  2. moorsey

    moorsey What's a Dremel?

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    I guess the master boot record got screwed, if it is asking you that.

    I would try booting up with an Ubuntu Live CD and check out your data there. Get it copied off elsewhere just in case, it could be that the HDD is faulty if this has happened.

    When you have your data copied off, check out the SMART data in Ubuntu, I can't remember the exact name of the tool, Disk Manager or something along those lines. See if any warnings are showing etc
     
  3. bnicholls195

    bnicholls195 What's a Dremel?

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    I am just about to do that, just got to find a spare live CD. I have got some data recovery software i used on a friends hdd which worked fairly well so if the linux way does not work i may initialise then recover the drive.

    Thats if there is not another way to do it. Cheers for your help and thanks for the quick reply!!
     
  4. Margo Baggins

    Margo Baggins I'm good at Soldering Super Moderator

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    Is not the master boot record - as that is only on boot drives, if he is in disk management in windows - its safe to assume this isnt his boot drive!

    I have had a couple of hard drives do this too me, often it has meant the drives are on there way out. Most of mine that did this wouldnt initialise or i would fight with them for ages deleting volumes, trying to add volumes and format etc. and normally it wouldnt go to well!

    Most recently I had a drive do this a month an a bit ago. i eventually got it to initialise, and then eventually got it to create a volume, but i could never format it, it just wouldnt complete in windows, wouldnt complete in linux, i wrote the drive off and started the RMA process, then I decided on a whim to plug it into another rig, my test rig, and it works fine on there, formatted it umpteen times, partitioned it, tested it, its fine, and now its fine back in the original machine so literally no clue what was up with that drive.

    If you havent backed up the data on there already, i guess you will have to go down the route of trying a linux disk - data recovery software I dont reckon will work until you have an initialised drive with a partitioned volume on it, at least I reckon - could very much be wrong on this though!
     
  5. moorsey

    moorsey What's a Dremel?

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    Ah yes, quite right, my bad, no MBR!

    I think it depends on the software. Linux data recovery tools I have used can be run regardless of partition status etc.

    I have also ran GetDataBack for NTFS and that is pretty good when partitions have been destroyed or similar
     
  6. bnicholls195

    bnicholls195 What's a Dremel?

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    Tried a linux live cd and the disk utility said the hdd had no partition. I am trying my recovery software because it can scan it even though it has no partition. Wish me luck!!

    Thanks for all your help!
     
  7. towelie

    towelie How do I Internet!!

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    I had this before rattleing my brain to what i used, but it was able to extract the RAW data from the drive which worked but all the file ended up being called 01-onwards due to the file system/partition getting courpted but it recovered them no the less.

    Will update with a free tool or the one i used when/if i remember.
     
    Last edited: 9 Mar 2012
  8. bnicholls195

    bnicholls195 What's a Dremel?

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    I decided to scan it with my recovery software and it recognised the drive which was good. It took about 8 hours to scan the drive and it found all the data and the partition details, folder name e.c.t.

    I have just copied the data on to a seperate drive and they all bar a couple still work. I say this because last time i scanned a formatted drive quite a number of files were corrupted and the partion names were gone, just the files were left. So after all that i am very happy!!
     

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