External HD Partition Encrypted - suddenly drive "not initialized" in Windows 10
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Maybe I left my brand new external HD plugged in while Windows 10 was updating, I don't know how it happened. However, now it doesn't show up in veracrypt nor in the windows explorer. When I press select device in veracrypt the external HD does not show up.
I read through multiple similar posts, but most seem from people who had the same problem and then initalized the disk as GPT. I did not do that, as that seems to make the problem worse.
What I did was restart, try different usb ports and finally, use AOMEI partition assistant and tried to rebuild the MBR which didn't do anything.
I don't have a rescue disk, didn't really know what that was for, before... now I do!!
Anything I can do other than what I've tried? Thanks so much.
Hey there,
before doing anything else, which could lead to (further) damage to your data, you should create an image of the whole drive. In Linux, one would use dd, dcfldd or ddrescue (not to be confused with dd_rescue) in case the drive is failing. I don't know anything alike for Windows - sorry!
Afterwards, if the drive really contained a now lost partition encrypted with VeraCrypt, the only thing I could think of is to create a new partition table (MBR or GPT, depending on what was there before) and create a new RAW (!!unformatted!!) partition with the exact same size and position on the drive as the lost partition. If you use a filesystem and/or overwrite any portition of the drive, other than the partition table information, there will be irreversible damage to the (encrypted) data.
Then, if there was not too much damage to the rest of the drive, mounting the VC volume could work. If not, using the backup header of VC (an option in the mount options) could still work.
If you were lucky enough to mount the volume, you should copy as much data as possible to another drive.
I think you should have a look at this post on the WD forums regarding this exact issue - you are not alone with this ext. hdd model suddenly losing its partition table:
https://community.wd.com/t/elements-25a3-suddenly-not-initialized/239848/4
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Greets
I forgot something important: after creating the drive image, you should mount it and work on the image, to keep the original data as it is. But in case the worst happens, having the full drive image should still be enough to go on. So if you already started doing stuff with the drive, you should still be good.
Greets
First of all, thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my question!
I should have found the page you linked to, but didn't think of googling the 25a3 name.
Unfortunately, I don't have the space to make clone my drive (it's 8TB). So I took the risk and tried to intialize it. But I get "the request failed due to a fatal hardware error". It's mysterious. I noticed that it says "deleted" when I look up events, not sure what happened there, as I certainly didn't delete it. I did tell windows not to use the drive letter that was assigned to it, which is a thing I had read in an article on volume encryption with veracrypt. However, that shouldn't make the entire disk completely inaccessible like it is now...
Make sure that the hdd is properly connected and that the cable is not damaged. If you've got a spare connection cable, try it.
If this won't help, you should further investigate the error message, search for help in a proper forum for general Windows errors or contact your drive's manufacturer, because of a possible hardware error.
You could also completely uninstall VC, just to make sure, there is no driver conflict or something alike.
Greets
FIXED !!
Wow. Just wow. I found the "solution": the power cable was defective!! I definitely tried several usb cables before until I stumbled across this post:
https://community.wd.com/t/the-request-failed-due-to-a-fatal-device-hardware-wd-hard-drive/263940/6
I had another 12v adapter and plugged it in and voila, everything back to normal. Just amazing how it seemed such a complex problem before.
Thanks again for your time and for answering my first question on this forum.
Last edit: Frieder Gruen 2021-12-12
Great that you found a simple solution for your issue. Strange that the power source was the issue, though o.O
Greets