HDD in BIOS, not in OS
 

I have a friend's hard drive here that was in an external case (it was a WD My Book or My Passport) that he could no longer see from within Windows. He tore the external case apart and took out the WD Caviar Green 1TB (WD10EADS) that was inside of it in a bid to bypass the USB to SATA converter, believing it to be the problem.

Well, I stuck it in my machine, went to the BIOS/UEFI, saw it, then booted from an Ubuntu 12.04 live USB. Inside Ubuntu, it wasn't visible, but my own internal hard drive was. So I rebooted again and booted from my internal hard drive with Windows 7 installed. During startup, it loaded device drivers from the drive, but I still couldn't see it in explorer. I also checked in the virtual disk manager in Computer Management and nothing was present.

Thoughts? Next steps? Thanks in advance.

Sounds like the drive is bad, not the enclosure.

Well, yes...

I want to be certain I'm not missing anything before I declare it no longer usable. The drive isn't that old and I'm lead to believe it was handled properly and received normal use.

If anyone knows anything else I should try, let me know.

If what all I've described strongly suggests the drive is no longer usable, let me know.

windows key + r > diskmgmt.msc ??? Not sure if it's the same "virtual disk manager" you're referring to.

Yeah, same thing. Somewhere it called it virtual disk manager; I accessed it via compmgmt.msc.

I've seen mentioned about initializing the disk. Is that something that can help me or is that not even relevant here?

Just type Disk Management in search bar on the start icon in windows 7.

Then click on the top link and it will take you to Disk Management.

From there you should see and be able to format the drive.

He already did that.




That's for new (RAW) disks. When you enter the Disk management a message popups asking about initializing the drive. AFAIK once initialized you don't need to do that anymore, not even if you switch it from a PC to another. There's no "Initialize" command in the disk management window either.

If it shows in bios but doesnt show in windows/linux then it does sound like a dud drive unfortunately man..If it doesnt show up in diskmgmt then i dont really know of any other way.Is there data on there you must get off or is it just that you want to know if the drives dead..?

Windows key + r brings up run command not search.

If you type disk management in run it doesnt bring it up.

So if he is a noob that is not helping.

Read carefully. I wrote windows key + r > diskmgmt.msc, that brings up the disk management interface. Try it.


Besides he stated in his first post that he had already gone to disk management just that he called it "virtual disk manager" so I wasn't sure if he was referring to the same thing. That's why I suggested the aforementioned command.

Anyway, it seems to me like the drive is dead. If there is any straightforward means to recover the data, I'd be interested in hearing it, otherwise it's not a major loss.

As a last ditch effort you can try running the Hirens Boot CD and see if any of the hard disk repair tools fix it. If not then RMA or Dump it and get a new one.

I'll give it a try.

Thanks to everyone for the input.