WD MyBook HD Files Missing

I have a WD My Book that failed to open. WD HD 1.0TB SATA WD10EARS I never formatted the drive. I simply used it as a drop storage drive to safely keep my prized data.

Thinking I could just plug it into my Presario Compact Destop Computer as an internal slave, I open and discarded the case. (I'll say it for you: Stupid Stupid Stupid MEEEE!!!)

Finding out this was impossible, I sat it aside because at least most of my family pictures and vids were on my laptop.

Then, last year, my laptop was stolen from my apartment. No I have no images from my family activities for the past 4 years. These are worth gold to me.

Then I remembered the WD Hard Drive. Took it to a computer guy, he said it was empty. Windows Disk Management shows 931GB free. The only thing he recover was 20 pages of the owner's file for the drive. Impossible!! I had 60-70GB of data on their.

Taking things into my own hand, (I'm using Windows XP here) I got a convert so that I could access the drive on my computer. Using multiple internet sources, one thread said to change the partition from GPT to Mbr. Gave me the steps. Still the format was blank. He encouraged me to set it as NTFS and give it a letter by initializing it.

OK. Now I think I'm making progress. NOOOOOOOO. I've tried TestDisk, PhotoRecv, Recuva. Nothing. I've been told the files are lost forever.

Is that so or is there something else to try?

 

Hi, ECNYCRR2o. Welcome to Major Geeks.

As you've found out, XP doesn't natively support SATA drives and you can't set up master/slave configurations with SATA drives because they sit one per cable.

All may not be lost though. With the SATA drive connected via USB to your Compaq Presario with your converter try MiniTool Partition Wizard's Partition Recovery feature. Let it scan the WD and if it finds the partition with the data, it should restore it.

If it can't find the info though, the files may not be there. Sorry.

 

Thanks for the tip.

Mini Tool Partition found only the files to the Owner's Manual. Nothing else.

My question is why my 50GB of my children's pictures and videos (MOV) not found?

Is it maybe that they were once listed as GPT? Just an uneducated guess.

Funny how I can get the pages to the Owner's Manual and nothing else.

Anyone else have any advice or suggestions?