Can't See My External Hard Drive

[HustleMe15]

OK, because of a little issue I had with an .exe file yesterday I had to do a factory restore and totally reset all the settings, and basically wipe everything from the hard drive. Thank you that I use an external hard drive to keep all the files that I download from here and elsewhere.

But now I have an issue. When I open up my folders directory, the external hard drive does not show. I get the Windows8_OS (C & the Lenovo (D and the DVD RW Drive (E, but no External Drive which before the wipe was (E.

It looks like the the computer installed the device and when I downloaded the WD Drive Utilities I can check the drive status which is fine, it passed the Quick Drive Test, and I currently have it doing a Complete Drive Test. The only thing is, I can't get to it.

Has anyone else had an issue like this before? I have to stop back at the computer store tomorrow anyhow so I am going to ask them as well. But if any of you out there have ever had an experience like this, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks guys!

 

[HustleMe15]

OK, cute!! Those were NOT intentionally made to be smilies in the post above. Cheered me up a little bit though. LOL.

 

[HustleMe15]

I'm Trying

OK, so it looks like one the programs that was removed with the drive wipe was the Paint program where I could cut and paste the screen shot to. So now I'm trying to figure that out too.

But the Disk Management has a Disk 0 Basic with 931.39GB available; which looks like the internal hard drive.

Then there is a Disk 1 Basic with 1862.86GB Unallocated which looks like the External Hard Drive since it is a 2TB drive.

I'll get a screen shot as soon as I can.

 

[HustleMe15]

Well, huge THANK YOU RockNLol!!! I've downloaded that program and it is scanning the disk now and OMG is says it is going to take 22 hours. LOL. There was right close to 1TB of stuff on the disk, so yea it's going to take a bit. Now I wonder if it was the .exe that cause the drive to do that, or was it because I still had the drive connected to the laptop when I ran the recover. From now I'm IF it ever happens again, I'll disconnect everything before doing a recovery. Now I'll just have to set up the laptop settings so it doesn't accidentally go to sleep while this is going on.

 

[gb2000ie]

Let's assume RoclNLol's little tool gets all your data back.

Since you clearly care about this data, it really needs to exist in at least two places! 2TB is not a lot of data in the modern age, so you should be able to pick up another 2TB drive cheap. Do that, then periodically sync your data from one to the other. THat way, you can't lose all your data to a single drive failure again.

My solution is to use a so-called 'drive toaster' a dock you plug bare hard drives into as my backup disks. When ever I buy a new external disk, I also buy a new bare drive the same size, and start mirroring them.

Remember - the question is not IF a given hard drive will fail, but WHEN it will fail, because fail it will.

B.

 

[skinjo9]

Hi Guys
this has happened to me too.
i had a fatal error come up which turned my computer off whilst the external drive was running. once rebooted i have lost the driver which was marked D# and sometimes H for some unknown reason, but i cant get the driver back. i have run run all the help ideas, driver management etc. so i connected the external drive to another computer and the same, no visiable driver. i am stumped too. thanks guys for your useful help on here. your all ace.

 

[gb2000ie]

Hi Guys
this has happened to me too.
i had a fatal error come up which turned my computer off whilst the external drive was running. once rebooted i have lost the driver which was marked D# and sometimes H for some unknown reason, but i cant get the driver back. i have run run all the help ideas, driver management etc. so i connected the external drive to another computer and the same, no visiable driver. i am stumped too. thanks guys for your useful help on here. your all ace.

In your case, the problem is almost certainly hardware. It could be the enclosure the hard drive is wrapped in, or, the hard drive itself.

If the data on the drive is important, try CAREFULLY opening the enclosure to get at the actual hard drive inside. Then, either connect the drive to the appropriate connector inside your computer, or, buy a new enclosure and put the drive into it.

B.

 

[HustleMe15]

Let's assume RoclNLol's little tool gets all your data back.

Since you clearly care about this data, it really needs to exist in at least two places! 2TB is not a lot of data in the modern age, so you should be able to pick up another 2TB drive cheap. Do that, then periodically sync your data from one to the other. THat way, you can't lose all your data to a single drive failure again.

My solution is to use a so-called 'drive toaster' a dock you plug bare hard drives into as my backup disks. When ever I buy a new external disk, I also buy a new bare drive the same size, and start mirroring them.

Remember - the question is not IF a given hard drive will fail, but WHEN it will fail, because fail it will.

B.

Yea definitely going to have to do the back up thing for the external starting like now. I thought just keeping it off the laptops hard drive would have worked. It didn't occur to me that the external could be affected too. Wow, talk about an experience.

And I do care about the data. Not so much the porn and crap, cause that just can all be redownloaded and it's not going to kill me if I lose it. But I had like a half dozen short stories at about the three and four pages mark that if I can't get those back I'm going to have to rewrite from the beginning. That's the kind of stuff that was important on it.

But thanks you guys for the help. I'm going to start rerunning that drive recovery while I'm at work next since it is going to take so long. In the mean time at least I'm back up and running.

 

[cockyblu]

before you did your wipe, did you remove your external drive or it was plugged there? if it was plugged, then it might as well been erased. your only solution is to recover those files as rocknlol said. you can also use a program called getdataback.

 

[HustleMe15]

Yes, the external hard drive WAS connected with the USB to the laptop when I did the wipe. There is where the issue seems to have arisen from. I have today and tomorrow off, and I work on the weekend. So I'm going to start the drive recovery again when I go to bed tomorrow night and let it work all night and while I'm working so by the time I get home on Saturday, with any luck, it will be done. Keeping the fingers crossed though.

 

[skinjo9]

Hi gb2000ie,
Thank you so much for your advise. I really apreciate it.
you are so kind and helpful to everybody. I think i will now get in touch with my computer repair man, as i am not confident in doing it myself.
thanks again a million
p:big hug:
skin

 

[HustleMe15]

Well, just to update, the lost partition recovery has been running for about 23 hours now and is just at 51%. One more day to go. And this is just doing the scan. Who knows how long until all this is done. Keeping my fingers crossed though