Question: I’ve had a smart warning on my 2TB drive for several months, so bought a replacement (also 2TB).
I plugged it in as an external drive using a HDD USB adapter kit (external power to SATA connections, plugging into the pc on USB) so I could copy all the folders I wanted to keep to it from the failing drive.
This is something I’ve done before with the same PC successfully before, but this time, when I came to open the case and switch the drives, I boot up to find the new drive shows as unnamed and with two partitions, one RAW and the other ‘unallocated’ – I was expecting to see the same partitions as viewable when I had the drive connected as an external, and of course all the files intact.
So, I thought, I could just plug in the HDD I’d removed from the case as an external using the same adapter kit so I could start the long process of copying everything over again. To my horror, this drive now shows up unnamed and unallocated with no partitions (previously it had two). I don’t have another PC to test the – now external – drive that’s showing empty.
I’d be very grateful for your expert thoughts of how I might be able to resolve this.
Answer:Connect both drives internally (without any USB adapters).
USB adapter uses non-standard HDD partitioning. Windows can’t detect it properly.
If you move drive from USB adapter to internal connection it must be reformatted.