All of a sudden, Windows says I should initialize my HDD to use it

[YonathanZ]

Hi,

 

All of my PC's storage is internal. Windows is installed on an SSD.

One of the HDDs, 2TB in size (and full of media), suddenly stopped appearing under This PC. I checked Disk Management and Windows immediately told me I need to initialize the HDD in order to use it. I was also asked to choose between either MBR or GPT partition type (or whatever).

 

Also, Windows showed a pop-up asking me to Restart in order to repair a drive, so I let it do it but it changed nothing.

 

I'd appreciate your advice.

[Technomancer__]

try to recover data with r - studio

the drives partition was accidentally deleated or the drive broke

[eeccrraaiigg]

sounds like the disk was cleaned or formatted

[YonathanZ]

No one uses this PC but me, and I definitely don't format drives accidentally.

 

[AncientNerd]

I have seen this if the master record for the drive is corrupted, I have recovered drives in this type of situation using low level tools. However the last time I had to do this it was back in 2012 so...the tools I used then are no longer valid. I have been using Acronis for all of my low level stuff lately but haven't had to recover a disk except by restoring a backup for years so I don't really know how their recovery tools are. 

 

Whatever you do DO NOT initialize that drive until you are sure you can't recover it - once you do that the data is unrecoverable. However if you have a recent backup your fastest path would be to initialize and format the drive then restore the backup, but w/o a backup you have to try recover.

 

Good luck.

[YonathanZ]

The worst thing is I don't even know what exactly was there. JRiver shows a lot of movies where the files are not found so at least I know what movies are gone, but everything else - I just have no clue.

[YonathanZ]

2 hours ago, AncientNerd said:

I have seen this if the master record for the drive is corrupted, I have recovered drives in this type of situation using low level tools. However the last time I had to do this it was back in 2012 so...the tools I used then are no longer valid. I have been using Acronis for all of my low level stuff lately but haven't had to recover a disk except by restoring a backup for years so I don't really know how their recovery tools are. 

 

Whatever you do DO NOT initialize that drive until you are sure you can't recover it - once you do that the data is unrecoverable. However if you have a recent backup your fastest path would be to initialize and format the drive then restore the backup, but w/o a backup you have to try recover.

 

Good luck.

How do I recover data with Acronis True Image?

[YonathanZ]

Thanks, JRiver lists all the missing files, so I made a text file out of it. There wasn't anything hugely important on that HD as far as I can remember, it was mostly just movies and TV shows.

 

Anyhow, I've tried to initialize it both as GPR and MBR and it won't work, it says the file wasn't found or something like that. After another restart to the PC, the HDD no longer appears on Disk Management at all. I think it's dead, and I've emailed the store I bought it from, it's just 6 months old. I hope they'll replace it. I have another HDD of the same exact model, it's 3 years old and never had any problems.

 

 

[AncientNerd]

What I have done is to have a backup using Acronis True Image - I have a couple of external drive that I backup to, I use one for a week then disconnect it move it out of the computer room (it should be off site but I don't have a good "off site" location so the other end of the house in a fireproof file cabinet does it. Then I attach the other in the same drive location. I have Acronis setup to save backups to a known location on that drive letter. The one time one of my data disks failed I was able to map out the bad sectors, using the seagate tools ( since it was a seagate drive http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/ ), then restore the folder that had been corrupted.

 

If the drive master record was trashed then I would expect to have to restore the whole drive, although I might try the manufacturers tools to see if they can find and recover bad sectors.  Also Acronis has been sending me ads about a new and improved version that has some data recovery tools that come with it. I haven't' looked at what the 2017 version can do because the 2016 version still works for what I need.

 

[AncientNerd]

Ah just saw your latest, yea that sounds like a dead drive.

 

[YonathanZ]

Just an update, I handed the driver to the store where I bought and they confirmed it's dead. They're sending it to the company that imports Seagate drivers into my country, and once they too confirm that it's dead, they'll give me a replacement.

[Farrukh]

do you have a system by Lenovo by any chance? It has happened to me on my Lenovo W540 , I have a SSD as the main drive and a 1TB WD blue in the ultra bay.

 

after updating drivers using the Lenovo companion app windows asked me to intialize the drive in ultra bay to use but the drive did not initialise using disk partition tools and showed a cyclic redundancy error. rolling back drivers etc didn't work. I did a clean install of windows 10 both drives showing up and working now. 

 

tried again updating drivers from Lenovo and got the same issue with the second drive. I have now blocked driver updates from Lenovo and reinstalled windows and restored from a backup and everything is working as before.

 

[YonathanZ]

No, it's a custom PC. I sent it to the shop which sent it to the company that represents SEAGATE in my country, and I was told that there's a piece of plastic that's missing from my HDD. I had connectivity problems with my SSD, and I guess I somehow damaged the HDD when I messed around in the case while I fixed the SSD connection (the sATA cable was not connected securely).