Partition gone after Windows 8 installation

[Mufti]

Hi,

I floolishely updated my laptop with Windows 8 yesterday, with all my external hard drives connected. It all went fine except for my 2TB USB3 hard drive that went missing. When I go to the Computer Management, it's still there, Healthy, but there is no file system, so I can't access it...
I guess I can reformat it, but there is some data in there I want to make sure I can recover afterwards, so I just want to confirm that I can reformat it and with a file recovery program, I'll be able to get my files back, before I do something and I lose everything. The files are pretty important to me...

Thanks

 

[PP Mguire]

There is no guarantee a file recovery program will work so if it's anything super important I wouldn't do it. Do you have USB3 drivers installed? Have you tried putting it on a different machine to copy the files you want?

 

[Mufti]

I guess with Windows 8, there would be some USB3 drivers? But that could be a solution. I could also try to take the drive out of the case and put it in another case...

So yeah I'm looking for this kind of solution before I go the format route. I think I'm going to try the USB3 drivers from the cds that came with the laptop [although they're going to be for Windows 7], but I doubt it would work. USB3 drives are still supposed to be compatible with USB2 and I just plugged it on another computer and it's the same problem, Computer Management sees it but there is no File System.

 

[carnageX]

I guess with Windows 8, there would be some USB3 drivers? But that could be a solution. I could also try to take the drive out of the case and put it in another case...

So yeah I'm looking for this kind of solution before I go the format route. I think I'm going to try the USB3 drivers from the cds that came with the laptop [although they're going to be for Windows 7], but I doubt it would work. USB3 drives are still supposed to be compatible with USB2 and I just plugged it on another computer and it's the same problem, Computer Management sees it but there is no File System.

You could try booting off of a Linux LiveCD and see if it recognizes it. But like PP said, there'sno guarantee that recovery software will recover your files.

 

[Mufti]

Actually, I think I'm good. I looked very carefully at the options available for files recovery [I used GetDataBack years ago, but I wanted to know if there was new apps that would do a better job today] and R-Studio worked really well. It allowed me to view my files on the hard drive and I'm copying them on another drive right now. So far it looks all good. I just hope there won't be corrupted files. Those are mainly video files...

Thanks anyway