Trying to fix undetectable WD 1TB HDD

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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MetalMic
Posts: 2
Joined: 22 Mar 2012, 02:35

Trying to fix undetectable WD 1TB HDD

#1 Post by MetalMic »

Hi Fiona,

First of all thanks for being such a great help to all of us here.

Currently I'm trying to fix my external WD 1TB HDD that had just died on me out of the sudden. it shows the symptoms of a corrupted partitio whereby the disk management display "unallocated space".

I ran the testdisk program and the first analysis shows only the following message and no partition was detected:

Partition sector doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55

So right now i'm doing a quick search on the HDD.

I'd like to know what does the message means?

One more thing, the HDD is now connected internally to my office PC for this troubleshooting and its detected in the disk management but not initialized. Do i need to initialize it for the testdisk to work?

Sorry for the noob questions..

User avatar
Fiona
Posts: 2835
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 17:19
Location: Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart - Germany

Re: Trying to fix undetectable WD 1TB HDD

#2 Post by Fiona »

Partition sector doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55
A partition or boot sector has a 2 Byte signatur that the boot sector is valid.
The TestDisk menu "Analyse" displays your current partition structur.
If there is no partition (like in your case as unallocated) TestDisk displays this message because, if there is no partition there will be no boot sector either.
If a partition is available in your partition table, but the boot sector is damaged or a partition might be accidentally created without formatting, you'll receive this message also.
In this case TestDisk displays that partition additional to the message "Partition sector doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55", so that user know which is the affected partition.
Only formatting adds the file system and boot sector or superblock to a partition.
If you format a partition containing data, equal to the previous partition, file system and boot sector will be overridden.
In this case, you'll need datarecovery software reading your data in underlying sectors.
If you format a partition different, a recovery might be possible.
Infos about a recovery of a reformatted partition, here;
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_Rec ... _partition
One more thing, the HDD is now connected internally to my office PC for this troubleshooting and its detected in the disk management but not initialized. Do i need to initialize it for the testdisk to work?
We've got some cases that the manufacturer used hardware encryption.
Not even the user noticed that.
Info here;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/repa ... .html#p814
In this case, I would be careful.
Might be a suggestion to put your harddisk back into your enclosure and run a diagnose from there.
If you get different results, like your disk is initialized and you find a partition, then it might be important to diagnose your disk from your enclosure!

MetalMic
Posts: 2
Joined: 22 Mar 2012, 02:35

Re: Trying to fix undetectable WD 1TB HDD

#3 Post by MetalMic »

Darn, mine is exactly the WD mybook essential external HDD.

The story begin when the HDD could not be powered up even if I connect the USB cable to any laptops that i can find. So did a stupid thing by powering up the HDD first and then plug the USB cable into the laptop yet nothing happens.

Then I remove the HDD off the enclosure coz I suspected the USB-SATA brigde was faulty. Never thought that the data could be hardware encrypted.

I will reassemble the HDD back to the enclosure and try again. If the USB-SATA card is faulty, I'd have to get a replacement before i can run any testdisk.

Many thanks for this very useful information!

User avatar
Fiona
Posts: 2835
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 17:19
Location: Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart - Germany

Re: Trying to fix undetectable WD 1TB HDD

#4 Post by Fiona »

You are welcome ! :)

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