WD External 3tb to internal... Disaster
Posted: 31 Mar 2014, 04:20
Hi, there, I've been searching and trying everything for 7 hours now... i'm hoping someone here can help. I need the data on my drive. 
I took a 3tb WD drive (serial: wd30ezrx) usb 3.0 out of the enclosure and thought I could add it as a third (as the case may be) drive to my computer via the internal SATA port.
Huge mistake! the drive wasn't recognized via win 8.1 so i checked Disk Management where a popup asked me to initialize the drive (seemed harmless enough) and I did. When I realized the drive still wasn't recognized I realized there was a bigger problem, so i stopped and sought out recovery software, before something tried to write to the drive.
So here's what I can't figure out.
I would think it's formatted ntfs but I'm not 100% sure. when I do a search on the drive using test disk choosing ntsf i get a possible corrupt disk error when I press "p" to look at the files. when I choose fat(something - 16,... a few do similar things) I get a list of pretty bad looking data.
If anyone could walk me through the steps (I have read the tuts but I don't know what options to choose) or just any Ideas would be great.
I have a felling that not finding the data may have something to do with the 3TB hdd size and the size of the sectors
I think that external drives use 4000k (ish) and internal needs 512k.
ALSO if someone knows for sure whether i should be starting "Intell" or "EFI GPT" that would be great to know. It says it recommended EFI GTP but the drive may have been altered when I initialized it.
THANKS IN ADVANCE. I'll be forever in your debt.
******* EDIT *********
#1 your software is amazing.....
#2 So I've been trying every combination of every idea I could come up with for days. because of the size of the drive scans take days sometimes.
Bottom line I was able to hook up the drive VIA the usb and get the software to see the files. they are coping as i type this. I'm very grateful. Thank you.
I would still like to know the difference in how the computer recognizes the files via usb vs. SATA. If anyone knows.
THANKS AGAIN!
I took a 3tb WD drive (serial: wd30ezrx) usb 3.0 out of the enclosure and thought I could add it as a third (as the case may be) drive to my computer via the internal SATA port.
Huge mistake! the drive wasn't recognized via win 8.1 so i checked Disk Management where a popup asked me to initialize the drive (seemed harmless enough) and I did. When I realized the drive still wasn't recognized I realized there was a bigger problem, so i stopped and sought out recovery software, before something tried to write to the drive.
So here's what I can't figure out.
I would think it's formatted ntfs but I'm not 100% sure. when I do a search on the drive using test disk choosing ntsf i get a possible corrupt disk error when I press "p" to look at the files. when I choose fat(something - 16,... a few do similar things) I get a list of pretty bad looking data.
If anyone could walk me through the steps (I have read the tuts but I don't know what options to choose) or just any Ideas would be great.
I have a felling that not finding the data may have something to do with the 3TB hdd size and the size of the sectors
I think that external drives use 4000k (ish) and internal needs 512k.
ALSO if someone knows for sure whether i should be starting "Intell" or "EFI GPT" that would be great to know. It says it recommended EFI GTP but the drive may have been altered when I initialized it.
THANKS IN ADVANCE. I'll be forever in your debt.
******* EDIT *********
#1 your software is amazing.....
#2 So I've been trying every combination of every idea I could come up with for days. because of the size of the drive scans take days sometimes.
Bottom line I was able to hook up the drive VIA the usb and get the software to see the files. they are coping as i type this. I'm very grateful. Thank you.
I would still like to know the difference in how the computer recognizes the files via usb vs. SATA. If anyone knows.
THANKS AGAIN!