HDD Not initialized!

OK. So this was handed to me by my daughter. She said her pc wouldnt boot. Would go to the splash screen then nothing...
After playing with it, I realised this was due to a problem with the secondary HDD. I removed it and it booted fine. Problem is she has a lot of pics and docs that need to be saved from this drive. Her daughter (my granddaughter) decided she liked to play with the buttons and turned the pc off and on repeatedly which done something to this HDD...

So I connected the HDD to my computer using a gadget that allows me to connect it via USB. now when I go into windows explorer theres nothing there. However, if I go into the computer management app I see it there but is "not initiated". I am at a loss of how to initiate it. Not to mention how to recover the data on the disk...

I appreciate any help you can give me!

 

It is possible that the drive suffered an internal hardware failure that prevents the PC from booting when it is connected internally. And also may have cause the drive uninitialized when connected to your PC via a USB adapter/enclosure. It is possible that an attempt to use data recovery applications would still unable to detect the drive and might further lead to permanent data loss.
In that case, If that data on that drive are much of importance and irreplaceable then a professional data recovery service might have chances to recover your files. You can try consult WeRecoverData.com as they might be able to provide you an honest evaluation about your problem.

 

Under Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management, what is the "File System" of the disk in question? And does the disk have a drive letter assigned to it?

 

It only shows that the disk is unknown and not initialized. Attached is a screenshot.

 

Yea, that's not good. I've followed a half dozen similar threads involving undetectable uninitialized drives and all have unfortunately ended with the user having to format the drive with a complete forfeiture of stored data. I know of a few people with similar problems who got desperate and went ahead with formatting and initializing the inaccessible drive, followed by the use of file recovery software that's capable of restoring files after a format. Not surprisingly, the recovery yield was not very high. If I were you I would look into professional file recovery services.

 

Although the data is not replaceable, it is a drive from a personal computer. The data is mainly pics of grandbabies and such... I dont have the funds for data recovery. I do, however have a data recovery program that I could use. Now my question is: is there a way to format a very small partition just to make the drive active again so I can attempt to recover the files? Or do I need to do a complete drive format?

 

Unfortunately, because the drive is showing as uninitialized, you'll have to format the entire drive. Otherwise, the data recovery software (is it Recuva?) won't see the drive either.

 

No I actually paid for a program called advance disk recovery. It has done good in the past for recovering deleted files and such. Just a pain to use and soooo slow....

Looks like Ill be reformatting. First I am going to connect it to my computer internally and see what happens. I know its a moot point but I gotta try

 

You can also run a linux live distro, connect the ailing hd using the adapter and mount it then see if linux can see any of the files.
Linux is able to see things that windows can't at times. If linux sees the files, start copying a few files to your computer's desktop for archiving (as in burning a CD/DVD or putting on another external hard drive or USB stick).
I always copy files rather than move because if there is any sort of hiccup doing the copying, the original file is still on the source. If you select move instead and there is a hiccup doing the transfer, you've lost the file.

Once I'm sure I have the files and they are usable, then it is safe to remove them from the source.

 

plodr...Do you have any recommendations or maybe a link? Never used one but Im sure its not that hard...

 

You can try to use Parted Magic or UBCD. Both of those bootable recovery CDs contains some useful tools that might help you get access to the drive.

 

OMG! Do not format the drive - do not do anything of the sort!!
You need to make an image of the drive, so you'll need another drive larger than that one.
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Never try to recover data to the same device!! Never make any writes/changes to said device!!
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First try find and mount http://findandmount.com/
If it will mount the drive, then you can try the Windows recovery tools - Recuva, whatever you like.
If not go full geek on the drive and...
Go over to youtube and watch a few videos that explain ddrescue.
Once you have the img made go get OSF Mount from http://www.osforensics.com/tools/mount-disk-images.html so you can get back into Windows and use it to mount the image and pull the files back.

Resources:
http://www.bootmed.com/using-ddrescue-for-windows-machines/
http://www.technibble.com/forums/guides-tips-and-tricks/48269-guide-using-ddrescue.html
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19446/make-a-drive-image-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/

Sorry I can't write out everystep, but there is plenty of info out there to help you.

 

Thanks for this! Ill look into this tonight. Will let you know what comes about.

 

As far as a simple fairly small linux distro that doesn't require lots of reading to figure out, I like Porteus. I use v2 and it is archived here available for download http://dl.porteus.org/i486/archive/Porteus-v2.0-i486/current/
either the 194.6MB or the 228.3MB (I suspect I have the smaller version).

 

I've successfully used Linux distro Lucid Puppy for less austere recovery projects (and other things). It's only 132 mb ISO file download.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-5.2.8/lupu-528.005.iso

You need to burn the ISO file to a CD using a burning app like CDBurnerXP. Then put the disk in your optical drive and reboot.