Absolutely NEED SOME COMPUTER GURUS

[ScootBaloo]

The boot sector is different to the partition table. The boot sector is used for booting , which you dont care about.
If the partition table is damaged then the drive may not be recoverable.

If you use dd to copy one drive to another , the second drive will contain a byte for byte copy of the first one
so if the first drive has a damaged partition table , then so will the second drive.

I would use the fdisk utility in Linux to examine the partition table. If it is OK , then the partitions should be mountable.
If you cant mount any partitions under Linux, then I reckon your best bet would be to try some sort of disk recovery
software as mentioned in one of the posts above.

 

[LBTM]

I was talking about both the boot sector and the partition table. You can take the BS + PT from the working drive and copy them to the broken. Done it many times and worked.

 

[NSGUITAR]

I'm starting to kind of learn this stuff as I read.. But not really at the same time.

THIS, is literally exactly my problem right here:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-for-PC/My-Book-Not-Showing-Up-In-My-Computer/td-p/355609


The stupid thing is that I found info saying that a lot of WD drives pre-format their stuff meaning that I'm only able to use 1.5 TB of my space rather than all 2 TB.. That's a big fucking difference if you were to ask me!

I also find it weird that a TON of people have had this problem, in the same exact way I'm having it... I just cant seem to find the exact solution to this.. But maybe with that info, it could help you guys.

 

[ScootBaloo]

I was talking about both the boot sector and the partition table. You can take the BS + PT from the working drive and copy them to the broken. Done it many times and worked.

True , but I don't think this is the first thing he should do.
Also, I would not overwrite the PT on the broken drive unless the second drive was identical.

I reckon he should first check to see if the PT is OK.

I think windows still ships with the fdisk utility, it would be useful to know if fdisk
can make sense of the partition table.

 

[DigitalMetal]

Personally i would be removing the actual drive from the enclosure in case its a problem with the usb bridge board electronics (first principles remove unknown quantities) .
Get a windows XP or W7 PC and install a demo of MacDrive so you can read HFS+
Open the PC up and plug the drive into a SATA connector and boot up,
See if the machine can see it.

If it cannot be seen by the PC then & Only then would i start looking at options already mentioned above.

 

[ScootBaloo]

Personally i would be removing the actual drive from the enclosure in case its a problem with the usb bridge board electronics (first principles remove unknown quantities) .
Get a windows XP or W7 PC and install a demo of MacDrive so you can read HFS+
Open the PC up and plug the drive into a SATA connector and boot up,
See if the machine can see it.

If it cannot be seen by the PC then & Only then would i start looking at options already mentioned above.

Yes, I agree, that would be the first thing to do , except I would plug it into a Linux PC instead of windows.

Also, he seems to think it is formatted as FAT32 which seems odd for a MAC drive and also, the first post sounded like he was plugging it into a MAC but later on we find that it is a PC, all very confusing.

 

[NSGUITAR]

My apologies for lack of being clear.

The drive is supposed to be formatted for Windows. I run PC at my studio. The computer I tracked on in jersey was a mac. I had only tried plugging the drive into that once, and realized it doesn't work for MAC, then the drive got unplugged without being ejected.

Now, Neither my pc at the studio nor my macbook at home see the drive in the my computer section.

But in windows, it does appear under device manager. Just not in my computer.

Macbook was only used to see if the drive was recognizable at all.

 

[Sloan]

did you check and see if a drive letter was assigned via DISK MANAGEMENT yet???

 

[Sloan]

 

[Williamn]

I had a problem with my WDC mybook that sounds alot like this.
Turns out the usb board inside was sketchy and when I pulled out the HDD and plugged it directly into my sata port it was working.

Worth a try I guess if the other stuff wont work.

 

[DigitalMetal]

Yup that would. My my first assumption

 

[ang3]

There was definitely mention of NTFS..

I will literally pay $1000 to do what it takes to fix this drive. So don't hold back on suggestions.

i had to do this!
i rebooted my comp and then suddenly the drive isnt recognized. did some research on data recovery around town and found this place that does them. cost me $1000 exactly. they gave me all the data on a new drive and gave me back the old drive still useless. they actually had to take apart the faulty drive and pull the disks out and extract the data like that.

 

[blackbird]

Try this
I bought the full version, after testing the demo.
I've lost hdd partitions and this program did the trick.
http://findandmount.com/

 

[ScootBaloo]

There is a 99% chance that the problem is the USB<->SATA electronics as mentioned by DigitalMetal.

Follow the advice of DigitalMetal and you will almost certainly recover your data.

If you dont want to give him the $1000 you promised , then you at least owe him a few free reamps.

 

[DigitalMetal]

^^^^

 

[NSGUITAR]

Got a new drive, don't even see the option to change the drive letter. FUCK YOU WD!!!

Help?

wtf is this shit?

 

[DigitalMetal]

that means your disk is there but not in a format windows recognises, download a demo of MacDrive and see if windows knows what it is then,

Have you plugged the drive straight into the machine bypassing the USB enclosure?

 

[NSGUITAR]

that means your disk is there but not in a format windows recognises, download a demo of MacDrive and see if windows knows what it is then,

Have you plugged the drive straight into the machine bypassing the USB enclosure?

Hey I actually wanted to thank you for replying man.

The first thing we did with my old drive (which is now fixed ) is take it right out of the usb bullshit.

Basically I took my faulty drive and this new one to a store and asked them to fix the old one and back up my files onto the other one..

The lady took over a week with it and could not fix the fucker, so she just decided to format both of them.. Even though fucking SPECIFICALLY told her "DO NOT FORMAT MY DRIVE NO MATTER WHAT!!!".. She did.. Both of them.. So now I have the old one unformatted and fixed, and I now need to format this drive somehow... But the weird thing is that when I right click ANYTHIGN in the device manager, those are the only options I have.. Even my regular c drive.

 

[DigitalMetal]

No Problem dude glead to be of help, Karma and all that ;0)

Re: your drive so it was the USB bridge that was fucked?
What a fucking tool she was for reformatting the drive though, thats why i will never trust a "professional" computer shop with my stuff.
Any way have a go with this on your old drive the data was on:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva
You might still get you data back.
To format and use the drive for future use you will need to choose convert to dynamic disc and then you can create a partition on that dynamic disc and use it from there.

EDIT

Or this

http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/?gclid=CK348_nE2q4CFcYNfAodz0xBRw

 

[Siguros]

No,no, you're right! It was FAT32 for sure. He was trying to explain the difference to me, but he was poor at communicating, so I didn't really catch his drift.

Just to clear some stuff up, since your drive is 2TB I highly highly doubt that it'll be formatted in FAT32, it'll either be NTFS or ExFAT. FAT32 on a large drive will face enormous problems and I don't recommend it.

Since you're using it on Mac I imagine it'll be NTFS... if I were you start formatting all your empty drives to ExFAT as it can be read by both Win7 and the latest OS X's perfectly fine unlike NTFS.

@arv_foh NTFS is read on every major operation system.

You've clearly never used a mac then...