1
I recently installed an old HDD of mine to recover some files in Windows 7. The problem is that the drive doesn't show up in Explorer. It's enabled in the BIOS and it also shows up as functioning in the device manager. What's even more weird is if I view the device in Computer Management I cannot change the drive letter. Any ideas?
에이바
Posted 2011-07-18T01:52:56.100
Reputation: 1 266
1
It has no partition information attached to it. Windows doesn't know if it's FAT or NTFS or otherwise. Usually a chkdsk works, but you need a letter. Try diskpart from an elevated command prompt to view the volumes. You may be able to attach a letter that way
Canadian Luke
Posted 2011-07-18T01:52:56.100
Reputation: 22 162
1
How does it appear in Disk Management? What does it say? Is it initialized, and if so, could it possibly be a GPT partition (depending where it came from)?
Chkdsk will not run on a disk without a valid file system. That is all chkdsk does, fix the file system. It has no effect on partitions.
Abraxas
Posted 2011-07-18T01:52:56.100
Reputation: 1 269
I'm not really sure what you are asking... there is a screenshot of Disk Management in the original question. – 에이바 – 2011-07-18T03:03:43.487
1It is clearly initialized. Something on the disk is goofed up so it is not reading the volumes. I think it is due to the former dual boot setup. @에이바 I am still looking for a way to fix it. – KCotreau – 2011-07-18T03:20:58.970
1
에이바, I think we are looking at this from the wrong perspective. I was trying to answer the question, and in the process came to the conclusion that the disk has something wrong (not physically) that is preventing from seeing the volumes. I believe that is due to the former dual-booting, and may take really in-depth knowledge of disk architecture to recover from.
The reality is that since you want to just get the files back, maybe we should just look as software that can scour the drive for files. Here are some:
My favorite is File Scavenger. The only thing is that it costs $49.
http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
I have not tried this, but Disk Digger is free:
Another one that is free (although you can buy support for $25) is "Recuva":
KCotreau
Posted 2011-07-18T01:52:56.100
Reputation: 24 985
0
Sometimes disabling it and then reenabling it will help. I had a drive that would fall asleep and Windows couldn't detect it. So I disabled it in Device manager and then reenable it. I've had to do that a few times with that same drive. PITA. . .
surfasb
Posted 2011-07-18T01:52:56.100
Reputation: 21 453
One important question: What kind of system did it come from? In other words, it is from a computer using a file system that is not recognized by Windows? – KCotreau – 2011-07-18T02:19:56.653
Honestly it's been a few years since I've used this harddrive but I believe it was a windows/linux dual boot and had NTFS as part of its partition. – 에이바 – 2011-07-18T02:30:29.857
Please select the disk 1, and do a "detail disk", and post the screenshot of that one. The select volume 2 and do a "detail volume", and post that. – KCotreau – 2011-07-18T02:33:49.983
Now that you mention it was a dual boot, I wonder if boot sector was screwed with. – KCotreau – 2011-07-18T02:43:37.067
http://gyazo.com/fce6f93d83beb0ba3f00f68b2e277a33.png – 에이바 – 2011-07-18T02:54:01.783