External HDD uninitialized on its own. Can I recover data?

[D_N_W]

I was getting fed up with trying to recover the data, so I decided to initialize the drive and accept the loss. However, when I tried to initialize the disk, I got an error (see picture). I put a second HDD inside my computer today and initialized it then formatted it. I noticed when I put that internal drive in, disk manager was able to determine the size of the drive prior to initialization. This faulty ext HDD does not comply with disk manager in such a way. The only info - or lack thereof - is "unknown" and "not initialized".

The drive is 3TB. I first tried to initialize via GTP (one of the two options available when initializing a disk in this way), but I was met with the error: "The disk does not meet the minimum size for GTP" . The error you see in the picture is produced when I select MBR (master boot recovery - the second option available).

Although this is confuing to me, it seems clear that my computer does not recognize that this drive is 3TB, but instead thinks the drive has a total unallocated space of 0B (see picture above, in previous post).

The solution that WD phone support suggested did not help, and could not give me any other information regarding my problem.

I think the next thing I will do is remove the drive from the enclosure and see if that will help matters.

Thanks again for the input!

 

[Joe C]

yup...that would be your best option, pull the drive from the enclosure and see if it works that way. And a 3tb drive will need to be set up as a GPT drive

 

[carnageX]

If you can't get Windows to get it to work when you hook it up directly, try out GParted and see if it can do any wizardry on it.