Ext. 4TB USB Suddenly Unallocated w/ Lots of Data Looking 4 HELP : )

Barebones drive used in a docking station. I always safely eject when done. Put it in the other day and crap on a cracker I see this:






I bought this 4TB drive because an external 2TB USB w/ enclosure was on the brink of implosion according to Hard Disk Sentinel and so I copied the 1.5TB of data onto the 4TB barebones drive while I waited for the latter's imminent demise. I continued to use the 2TB but more as a way station for info that was regularly backed up elsewhere. The irony now is that the 2TB continues to chug along and it's backup the 4TB seemingly took a crap on me. It wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't continued to add new data to the 4TB drive.


Sadly it appears that diskpart is no help here since I do not want to format but rather get the data back. Here's hoping there is some kind of miracle cmd out there that someone can share with me that will change the unusable unallocated drive back so that it is allocated and once again show up in explorer.


A GOOGLE search seems to indicate that there are all sorts of consumer programs out there claiming to do this for me though they are all mostly in the US 50.00 plus range and I have no idea if they work or not. Sending the drive to a recovery place is out of the question since I seem to recall that this can cost an arm and a leg.


So here is hoping someone knows of a windows command that will help me or barring that what do you all know of some of the software out there that claims to make everything all right again. So far I have come across iBoysoft Data Recovery Home for Windows, MiniTool Power Data Recovery, MiniTool Partition Wizard (paid) and EaseUS Data Recovery Software.


Thank you.

There is no built-in Windows command or utility that can do it. You need third party software such as:
Best Free Data Recovery Software (2018 Update) - MiniTool Power Data Recovery

NavyLCDR said:

There is no built-in Windows command or utility that can do it. You need third party software such as:
Best Free Data Recovery Software (2018 Update) - MiniTool Power Data Recovery

Thanks for the response.

>There is no built-in Windows command or utility that can do it.

Son of a Bit@h! Do you have any first hand or even second hand knowledge regarding the above and how well it works? It seems that quite a few of the apps advertise restoring deleted partitions but that is not my problem. Any info on it's counterpart EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional. I think I know that all the free versions are limited in scope that is they will allow you to only recover less than 1GB of data if it is is in fact recoverable and they all seem to emphasize recovery. I have not seen any of these programs that say "Oh, I see your drive has become unallocated. Here is a way to make it allocated again so that it shows up in explorer." They all seem to want to "recover" the data which I suppose if that is the only option it beats the alternative with a stick. Thanks.

EdTittel said:

I've used MTPDR to restore several drives. It's worth paying for -- MUCH cheaper than a Data Recovery service (your next option, however, if it fails to recover your stuff and you MUST have those files) -- and worked to help me restore an entire drive successfully after I reformatted the wrong target. Check out this Win10.Guru story I wrote on the tool: Toolkit Item: MiniTool Power Data Recovery (MTPDR $) Win10.Guru
HTH,
--Ed--

Thanks for the info and the link to the article which is sadly (for me, since it looks like that is where I am heading) considering it's date of September 13, 2018 is timely. I was thinking first of running the free or demo (crippled version) which as I understand it will show me all of the files that I can possibly recover and then if it finds enough to my satisfaction I understand I can purchase a license key and input it into the demo program and continue to recover the files. However I am also thinking that the less activity on the drive the better and rather then using the demo version first I should just purchase the full version and let it run for two days (4TB!)

Just to be clear however I do not want to recover files that have been deleted and that have not as yet been written over nor do I believe that I want to recover a deleted partition unless the entire 4TB drive is considered as one partition since it is being used as only a data drive. What I want is to recover the files that are currently (hopefully) on the drive and then what I can't save them to the problem drive but rather I would have to recover them to another drive and then when I have them all (fingers crossed) I can then proceed to initialize and format the problem 4TB drive and write back the recovered files to it just as if nothing had happened.

Am I understanding this and will MTPDR do this for me? Thanks for taking the time today.

phaedruspress said:

It seems that quite a few of the apps advertise restoring deleted partitions but that is not my problem.

It actually most likely IS your problem. The partition table that defined the partition got deleted or corrupted. More than likely all that will need to happen is for the program to restore the partition table from remaining information it finds on the drive and, hopefully, everything will magically reappear - assuming nothing writes to the drive before then, and since it is still unallocated, nothing probably did write to it.

I had it happen to me once about 10 years ago. I paid about $40 for a program, can't remember which one, and it asked if I wanted to restore the previous partition (which was the same size that was there before). I said yes, about 10 seconds later everything reappeared. There are two different "tables" on the drive. There is the partition table which describes the starting and ending point of the partitions on the drive. Losing the partition table results in the drive showing as not initialized and/or unallocated. Each partition will contain a file system table that describes the location of the files within that partition. Losing the file system table will still show a partition on the drive, but it will be in RAW format.

Being unallocated, your drive has a better chance of full recovery, because what the recovery program will do is restore the partition table without affecting the file system table - and it will make the existing file system table for that partition usable again. If you just went ahead and "re-initialized" the drive by defining a new partition - the old file system table for that partition would be discarded and you would begin to lose data as the drive got written to. In that case, the recovery program would have to go through and start piecing together what it could find of the old files and chances for recovery would be much less.

Usually, backup copy of gpt table should be stored cca 50 sectors from the end of disk; if this copy is not corrupted, it is possible to copy gpt table to 3rd sector of disk using any hex editor (HxD recommended). Not so easy; always backup target area to file before overwriting; some training in virtual machine may be extremely useful.

Ok, so i am confused by all of this. I am not very tech savy lol.

I had windows 10 backup on my 1TB WD external hard drive. My 1TB external hard drive was also having all my important files along with pictures and videos. I am building a new computer and used my 1tb external hard drive to boot up the new computer and install windows 10 onto it.
After reboot, all my data/files/pics/videos on 1TB got deleted/formatted. When I plug in this hard drive again, it is showing only FAT 32 GB storage instead of showing 1TB. I went to manage and disk management, it is showing below info, which is showing 899.48 GB unallocated.
Can someone please help me how to get back all my deleted/formatted data/files/ics/videos ???
Thanks

I ran minitool partition wizard and attempted to recover the partitions. It took several hours and when it got to 100% it asked which partitions i wanted to keep so i selected both and it did nothing. Not sure what to do next.

The 1GB disk partition is probably lost (key area overwritten). Do not do anything more unless you know what you do, esp. do not use your usb2sata converter. The 4GB disk is your only chance, keep it intact. Tomorrow I write more.