I have 2 external drives that weren’t showing up in “this pc” windows 10 when I plugged them in via usb(3.0). I eventually got lucky and they showed up the other day I don’t know what changed, but I did not mess with the power setting until now. It may have been because of that power saving feature or whatever it is. But I decided to open the enclosures up and put the hard drives in my pc so I could make 1 a new drive for my pc and the other so I could transfer a bunch of files faster instead of doing it over usb.
Now they both definitely wont show up in this pc via usb using the external adapters they came with. Each drive shows up in disk management, but both are unallocated. 1 has a bunch of files on it I don’t want to lose and I’m pretty sure the other one has nothing on it. How do I access those files without losing them? I really don’t want to lose any of that data.
Sounds like the USB to SATA controller may be going bad. I’ve had that happen with cheaper external HDDs before. If you can connect it to your PC via Sata cable you can try running Recuva, i’ve almost always had good luck with that. Running Linux via LiveUSB is also a good option just to verify that the drive is working as expected aside from a possible partition fault.
The data to USB adapters work fine because they connect to the PC Everytime basically they just can’t be viewed. They come up in disk management and safely remove hardware in the bottom right. I really hope the hard drives aren’t going bad they have been barely used. I don’t think I even used one of them. Barely any hours on them. I really thing it was windows 10 messing with them. Once I changed what to do with USB devices to explore files it seemed to work as external.
I just want to be able to view the files on them to transfer them and I don’t want to lose any data.
How old are the usb enclosures, did they come with the drives? Certain old usb adapters can’t see past the 2TB limit, but usually they just over write past that point and corrupt your data. You didn’t say if the usb was powered by usb or had ac power bricks, if your usb ports aren’t strong enough, that can also be a problem.
bought them as externals. have worked fine the rare times i have used them(other than windows 10). not that old/dont have many hours on them. both are usb ss 3.0 powered by ac bricks. I have them out of the enclosures currently but I thought I would be able to explore the files via usb(i was able to the other day) so I have one hooked up to the sata usb adapter and powered by brick. other is disconnected at the moment.
@Big_Al_Tech one is disconencted and the other is using sata to usb adapter powered by brick. I can put them in system if its any easier.
no i have not tried live usb stick yet. does that require linux? i am linux ignorant. i am trying minitool right now and downloaded recuva like the others suggested and will try that next.
Only thing I can think of:
The front panel wire on mine is really thick and sometimes the front panel connector (including the usb 3) get loose from the motherboard.
Yup it will be Linux for a live USB. You do not need to be super savvy at this stage. Ubuntu looks relatively like windows and there are others that look very like it for the purposes of navigating to the drives, but better people can advise on that.
Just boot from USB in the UEFI boot options with the live stick plugged in and it will start up to a desktop, form there it should not be hard too work out where the “my PC” type thing is and see if the drives show up. If they do check if the files are there and readable, if so just copy them off to something working. Then you can shut down and unlpug the USB and change the boot options back to the windows drive and carry on.
If you cant manage to get the files off with that program, I highly recommend you use a linux live USB as @Big_Al_Tech & @Zibob suggests. I use mint as my go to but any distro should work fine. I have used photorec in the past with success, theres also testdisk as well. Either one should be able to get you going again. You will need to use the terminal in linux to do this but dont worry about your skill as there are tons of tutorials out there for this exact thing. They will walk you through step by step, just follow the instructions and we can help fill in the gaps if there are any issues.
As far as drives go I think HGST is still king for drive life but any of them are pretty good options. I wouldnt hesitate to get a WD drive simply because they are cheap and historically work well. Anecdotally I have had to RMA WD and HGST drives. No manufacturer is perfect. WD has the easiest RMA procedure IMO, while HGST has the better warranty IIRC.
As far as backup plan. I use a NAS with mirroring for redundancy. I really should have another copy somewhere else but I’m not as concerned about my data. It really depends on how mission critical your data is to you. If you want to play it safe you should have a local backup, and an offsite backup.
Well, no. Usually when a file is deleted it is merely “flagged” to be written over. In your case it would seem as if the partition information is gone. For NTFS drives this isnt a huge deal as theres usually multiple copies of the file table in case something like this happens. Testdisk can actually recover that for you and possibly fix the partition. Photorec will just find the files and allow you to copy them to another drive. I’m not aware of any windows utilities that can correct your partition issue though they may be able to find the files.
My suggestion to you is to get either LiLi or YUMI and get a usb drive set up. I recommend LiLi for your use case as it will do everything for you without needing to know a bunch about creating a live USB. It will download the distro, I recommend linux mint or ubuntu, put it on the usb for you, and make it bootable. From there you only need to boot it and go from there.