Western Digital 500 Gig problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Theslaz
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Theslaz

My portable Hd has crashed; why I don't know. It is a 500 Gig Western
Digital about 2 years old. It appears to power up but nothing will show
at the computer. I removed the Hd from the enclosure and connected it to
my computer via a USB port. The drive is a SATA and I'm using a USB 2.0
to IDE/Sata cable adapter. My computer does recognize the drive as drive
"K:". However; that is all it does. If I double click the drive letter I
always get the error message "The parameter is incorrect". If I go to
the command prompt; I cannot get to the drive. However; if I try the
CHKDSK command; it will give me the error message "that type of file
system is RAW; CHKDSK is not available for RAW devices". I have tried
three different "Data Recovery programs" that all claim to be able to
fix the "RAW" data problem. All three came up with negative results.
The drive is spinning and NOT clicking; so it appears to be physically
okay. I would like to retrieve the information on it; but if I don't it
won't be a big deal as I used it as my back up to my main computer. I
did run the "Format" command and it told me to ad the /FS switch to the
command; but that is as far as I went with that; for now!!

Any suggestions?? If I can not retrieve any info of this drive; will it
be possible to format??

Thanks in advance.
 
Just to add to this. I went into control panel and under properties for
the drive; I clicked the "Populate" button. Basically nothing happened;
all zeros. In reading an article on this I came across this statement:
"If you click populate and it fails to give you any information, theirs
a 99.9% chance that the hard drive is stuffed."

Thanks
 
JS said:
Do you have the ability to connect the drive
directly to a SATA cable?
Click to expand...
No; my computer does not have Sata connectors. I can Convert the IDE
socket on my motherboard to a SATA socket via an adapter if you would
think that would work!
 
Theslaz said:
No; my computer does not have Sata connectors. I can Convert the IDE
socket on my motherboard to a SATA socket via an adapter if you would
think that would work!
Click to expand...

Do you have a friend that has a desktop PC that
supports/has SATA drive/connectors on there
motherboard. If so then connect your drive directly
to the friends computer and see if Explorer can see the files.
 
Theslaz said:
My portable Hd has crashed; why I don't know. It is a 500 Gig Western
Digital about 2 years old. It appears to power up but nothing will show at
the computer. I removed the Hd from the enclosure and connected it to my
computer via a USB port. The drive is a SATA and I'm using a USB 2.0 to
IDE/Sata cable adapter. My computer does recognize the drive as drive
"K:". However; that is all it does. If I double click the drive letter I
always get the error message "The parameter is incorrect". If I go to the
command prompt; I cannot get to the drive. However; if I try the CHKDSK
command; it will give me the error message "that type of file system is
RAW; CHKDSK is not available for RAW devices". I have tried three
different "Data Recovery programs" that all claim to be able to fix the
"RAW" data problem. All three came up with negative results.
The drive is spinning and NOT clicking; so it appears to be physically
okay. I would like to retrieve the information on it; but if I don't it
won't be a big deal as I used it as my back up to my main computer. I did
run the "Format" command and it told me to ad the /FS switch to the
command; but that is as far as I went with that; for now!!

Any suggestions?? If I can not retrieve any info of this drive; will it be
possible to format??

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Check with WD, the drive may still be under warranty and you can get a
replacement for free. Just did that with a 500gb WD drive that I had that
wouldn't spin up. Only cost is shipping it to them.
 
JS said:
Do you have a friend that has a desktop PC that
supports/has SATA drive/connectors on there
motherboard. If so then connect your drive directly
to the friends computer and see if Explorer can see the files.
Click to expand...
Appears that i know no one that has a computer that supports Sata!
 
Jerry said:
Check with WD, the drive may still be under warranty and you can get a
replacement for free. Just did that with a 500gb WD drive that I had that
wouldn't spin up. Only cost is shipping it to them.
Click to expand...
Been there; done that. Wd will not cover the Hard drive as it is past
the warranty date!
 
I did manage to format the drive. Went into Disk Management and it gave
me the option to delete the partition; which I did. I was than able to
assign a drive letter and format. Problem is; it would only give me the
option of formatting a partition with a capacity of 23.5 Gig. My drive
was orginally 500 Gig.

Is there a way to reclaim the missing space??
 
--
Did you get any answer about the system not seeing the full 500GB on your WD
drive. I'm trying to install XP back onto a SATA drive that had Windows 7
Ultimate on it and the XP setup does not see the 500GB. Hope you got an
answer so I can read it.
 
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