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General discussion

WD Portable 2TB Hard Drive use Out of Case

Mar 28, 2011 9:53PM PDT

Good morning everyone!
So here is my dilemma that I am dealing with.
I have a 2TB WD Portable hard drive (I am not sure the model number or anything, but it is the bigger kind that has its own power plug.)
What ended up happening was the USB port within the case of the hard drive broke (it fell into the case).
So, I have taken it apart, but my knowledge of how to get it back on is not the best. I do have a kit that connects a hard drive (SATA or IDE) to your computer via USB (the actual kit is this one found at http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3276554&csid=_21 )
When I plug it into my computer this way, it installs the driver for my kit, but the hard drive does not pull up.
I go to Disk Management, and see the hard drive connected, but the drive says the space is "unallocated". Before using WD connection it was NTFS.
Is there a way for me the hard drive (other than telling it to format) to be recognized with my windows?
Please note I am using it in Windows 7 64 bit professional.
Thank you in advance for all your help and I hope to get this resolved! (1.5 TB of data I would hate to lose lol)

Discussion is locked

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Did you try?
Mar 29, 2011 1:48AM PDT

The top post in this forum notes many free and trial softwares that address do it yourself recovery.
Bob

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Yes, just wondering a little more about....
Apr 4, 2011 10:00PM PDT

Good morning, sorry it has taken me a while to get back to you, and thank you for responding.
Yes I have seen that post, and have downloaded the software, my main question is why would it be when I pull the hard drive out of the case does it not recognize the data anymore.
I do not believe that it just went bad, im thinking there must be something more to it (it was working fine the day before, just outside of the case it is having issues.
Any thoughts on that? Does the controller board have something to do with me accessing the data as a kind of security measure?
Maybe the hard drive did go bad, but im just trying to cover all my bases before I format it and tell it to start the recovery process Happy

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Re: recovery
Apr 4, 2011 10:07PM PDT

First try the recovery with any of those programs you found. Only after you got off all data you wanted start partitioning and formatting!

That's the only right sequence to do it.

Kees

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why would it be when I pull the hard drive out of the case d
Apr 5, 2011 12:34AM PDT

why would it be when I pull the hard drive out of the case does it not recognize the data anymore.

That's really great news. If it works in the case then you have a chance to save your files.

And yes, there are a few cases which have odd USB to SATA converters. But your question tells me you have a chance to backup your files.
Bob