Crashing Hard Drives

A

Aharon

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Hi guys

I need your ugent help and advice :)

I have two 3TB HDDs - both WD.

I use a Nexstar HD docking station to connect the drives to my computer. Every few weeks I will click on the drive (even if it hasn't been switched off) and it will say cannot access. When I then switch off and on again, I get the message that the drive is unformatted or in an unrecognized format and needs to be formatted. I then lose everything and have to start again.

On the last episode I thought maybe it was something to do wsith it being a 3TB HDD, so I partitioned to 2x 1.5TB and it has now happened AGAIN but to only one of the partitions, while the other continues to work.

I am desperate with the drives and losing my data.

So:

1. Why is this happening
2. How can I recover my data - I havent written anything or formatted the drive.

Thanks
Aharon
 
Thanks - will do shortly - as soon as I am at that PC.
 
Sounds like the boot sector could be damaged. Create a dummy partition first (the smallest one possible) and don't assign a drive letter to it and then create your real partition. If it's not storing anything critical you can continue using it.
 
Swa said:
Sounds like the boot sector could be damaged. Create a dummy partition first (the smallest one possible) and don't assign a drive letter to it and then create your real partition. If it's not storing anything critical you can continue using it.
Click to expand...

I agree it sounds like something possibly with the boot sector... By creating another partition, surely I will delete my data currently on the drive? Is Windows admin software ok to create it?
 
Just another pic - I went into the administrator settings and it shows the drive as RAW

Drivelist.png
 
Aharon said:
I agree it sounds like something possibly with the boot sector... By creating another partition, surely I will delete my data currently on the drive? Is Windows admin software ok to create it?
Click to expand...
You probably already did that.
 
Aharon said:
I have not done anything to the drive in the hope of finding the safest way to proceed
Click to expand...
You did repartition it. Or did you not store anything new on it? If you didn't format the first partition you may be able to get some back.
 
I have had nothing but bad experiences with docking stations. Have you tried connecting the drives internally to see if they still have the same problem?
 
I have 2 freecom docking stations (different model), got the second one because the first one always did this to me, I was able to recover everything with recovery software tho, but then I realised that when windows said that it needs to format the drive, all that needs to be done is for that drive to be put into a different docking station, or in your case, try linking it to one of the SATAs on your board, chances are, it will just work. (provided you haven't formatted it).
 
oldhat said:
I have had nothing but bad experiences with docking stations. Have you tried connecting the drives internally to see if they still have the same problem?
Click to expand...
I have - same problem

Kawak said:
I have 2 freecom docking stations (different model), got the second one because the first one always did this to me, I was able to recover everything with recovery software tho, but then I realised that when windows said that it needs to format the drive, all that needs to be done is for that drive to be put into a different docking station, or in your case, try linking it to one of the SATAs on your board, chances are, it will just work. (provided you haven't formatted it).
Click to expand...
No luck, but thanks - done with the docking station.

Swa said:
You did repartition it. Or did you not store anything new on it? If you didn't format the first partition you may be able to get some back.
Click to expand...
The partitioning was done weeks ago, to try and avoid this problem. The data I put on subsequent to the partitioning is what I want to recover.
 
Last year I purchased three of those WD drives (WD30EZRX), one failed almost immediately (99% of the time the drive just didn't mount, seemed to be an issue with the controller). I replaced it with a Seagate.
 
Last edited:
Today said:
Last year I purchased three of those WD drives (WD30EZRX), one failed almost immediately (99% of the time the drive just didn't mount, seemed to be an issue with the controller). I replaced it with a Seagate.
Click to expand...

Personally not a fan of WD. But I don't want to throw these!
 
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