larrynose Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 Hello, I have a WD Elements 1 TB drive that doesn't seem to be working the second time around. My OS is Windows 10. I tried moving some images and it seemed to work fine. A couple of months later it doesn't work- I've tried updating drivers going to Device Manager but it says the best driver is already installed. Under Disk Management the drive shows as RAW. Not sure what I should be doing now, so any help would be appreciated. I don't mind losing the existing data on the Drive. Should i be formatting it? Why doesn't it show as NTFS? Please advise. Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 (edited) I don't understand this statement: " doesn't seem to be working the second time around.". Was this only the 2nd time you used this drive? If the drive is new, it should be covered under warranty. If it isn't new and no longer covered under warranty then It might be worth trying this. https://www.easeus.com/storage-media-recovery/convert-raw-external-hard-drive-to-ntfs.html I have never used the program and I don't run Windows 10. I do own 7 WD portable hard drives. So far, all my drives with assorted images have worked with 1 exception. On a 2TB drive, some of the images became corrupt. My theory, the drive has 2 spinning platters and one of the platter has gone bad. I've moved this drive out of the rotation for storing images. Eventually, I'll put a 3rd copy of other things on the drive rather than images because I no longer completely trust it. Edited July 13, 2020 by zlim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 Well RAW means that there is no partition table or anything. It must be formatted and partitioned to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 Look at this https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/hard-disk-became-raw.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrynose Posted July 14, 2020 Author Share Posted July 14, 2020 On 7/13/2020 at 8:06 PM, zlim said: I don't understand this statement: " doesn't seem to be working the second time around.". Was this only the 2nd time you used this drive? If the drive is new, it should be covered under warranty. It was purchased 2 years ago and out of warranty and I had it used only twice! But, thank you for the link. I shall try it out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrynose Posted July 14, 2020 Author Share Posted July 14, 2020 On 7/13/2020 at 9:20 PM, securitybreach said: Look at this https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/hard-disk-became-raw.html Thank you for the link. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 14, 2020 Share Posted July 14, 2020 5 hours ago, larrynose said: Thank you for the link. No problem, let us know if that helps out any. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrynose Posted July 17, 2020 Author Share Posted July 17, 2020 On 7/15/2020 at 3:57 AM, securitybreach said: No problem, let us know if that helps out any. Hello, The drive isnt 1 TB as I believed it to be. It is 4 TB and I did recover few files ( that I did want) using the link you gave. I tried formatting and partitioning. The disk showed up unknown and unallocated. I attempted to partition the drive and ended up with one NTFS partition and another half as unallocated. I am unable to do anything with the unallocated half (as in convert it into NTFS) Could you please guide me to partition this drive in the right manner as I am not sure I have done it right? Also how do I change the name of the disk from appearing as disk1 to just some drive letter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 Boot into a Linux livecd and run gparted. From there, you can simply resize that H partition to the size of the whole disk. Or create a new partition on the unallocated space. You could also do this in windows as long as the parititon is not mounted, using Disk Management: https://www.diskpart.com/windows-10/windows-10-disk-management-0528.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 You need to be using UEFI as your setup scheme and then partition the drive as GPT to get the full 4 TB of storage. If you have an old computer using BIOS and MBR you'll get a maximum of 2 TB. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 3 minutes ago, raymac46 said: You need to be using UEFI as your setup scheme and then partition the drive as GPT to get the full 4 TB of storage. If you have an old computer using BIOS and MBR you'll get a maximum of 2 TB. Ha, nice catch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted July 18, 2020 Share Posted July 18, 2020 I haven't purchased anything larger than 2TB because on our four Windows 7 computers, I don't want a problem with drive recognition. If you ever want to plug it into something running an older version of Windows, I'd simply partition the drive into two 2TB parts. Then you won't have a problem. Question: if I bought a larger hard drive and only have Windows 7 computers, how do I partition the drive into two 2TB parts? (I can see me buying a larger drive if the price is good.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 18, 2020 Share Posted July 18, 2020 A 4 TB non-booting data drive would probably work OK on a Windows 7 BIOS computer if it were initialized as GPT. There could be some issues with SATA on older motherboards. However if you want to use the 4 TB drive to actually boot the computer you'd need UEFI. The problem is that if you initialize with MBR you won't see more than 2 TB so you can't partition / format the unallocated space. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 I'm talking about an external portable 4TB drive. My days of adding another hd to our aging Windows 7 computers is over. In fact, mine is a SFF and about the only thing I did was increase the RAM. How does one "initialize" a drive to do anything with it? Found how to do it here https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/initialize-a-hard-drive-ssd.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 Any partition manager will do the job. Gparted works in Linux, or I use Partition Magic in Windows. Any drive has to be initialized then partitioned and formatted. GPT is the current way to initialize, MBR is old school. Checking the hard drive in this laptop I'm using (500 GB) it is obviously GPT because the laptop supports UEFI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 5 hours ago, zlim said: I'm talking about an external portable 4TB drive. My days of adding another hd to our aging Windows 7 computers is over. In fact, mine is a SFF and about the only thing I did was increase the RAM. How does one "initialize" a drive to do anything with it? Found how to do it here https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/initialize-a-hard-drive-ssd.html You will still not be able to see any of the drive over 2tb. That means you will not be able to initialize or format the space over 2tb until you convert it to GPT partition instead of MBR. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 I have never tried this but there are a couple of methods listed here: How to Convert MBR to GPT Disk in Windows 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 I just checked a WD My Passport drive that is USB and that I've had quite some time and it's initialized as MBR. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 I have a 2nd external hard drive that is currently blank. I used my copy of Gparted Live to initialize it as GPT. All you do is set up a new Partition Table as GPT. Then you can partition and format to your heart's content. My old laptop has a DVD-ROM so I used the Gparted CD and booted the computer from there. You can also boot from a Gparted USB if you want. I would assume if you bought a 4 TB external drive it would already be set up as GPT. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 It's not set in stone that UEFI needs GPT, or BIOS needs MBR. In windows GPT is required for UEFI but Linux doesn't care. Is it possible to boot Linux from a GPT disk on a BIOS system? Booting with MBR in UEFI (No CSM mode at all)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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