recover data on unallocated hard drive

[dave123]

My laptop crashed and now l have a hard drive l cannot access. It does not show up on My computer as a drive letter. Show in disk management as unallocated space. I have tried recovermyfiles but it finds nothing and have tried few other recovery programs but nothing works, they scan but find nothing they cant access the disk there seems to be no partitions or anything can anyone help. thanks

[GDH]

Hi,

If the drive is just "unallocated" it should be a straight forward recovery. First, make sure that you have your Windows power settings so that the drive does not power down and go to sleep. Then use Recover My Files to run a "Recover Drive" search on the hard disk in automatic mode. There is a video link in the fist post of this forum for more details on how to run this search.

If you don't get any files back, then something is more sinister is happening - e.g. I suspect your drive may not be initialized - i.e. not being read by your PC.

[cha214]

hi GDH!

i do have the same problem, my external hard drive doesn't show up in "My Computer" but it recognize in "Disk Management" it says that my HD is now "Unallocated". i try to initialize it enable for me to create a "New Simple Volume" on the unallocated drive but it didn't initialize.. i suspect the "MBR" is damaged. is there a way to resolve this problem? thanks.

[GDH]

A drive that is not initialized is usually an indication of a hardware error on the drive and you computer can no longer communciate with it properly. If it will not initialize, usually the only solution is a hardware data recovery service.