WD external HD suddenly unformatted

[scrltrider]

Hi, first I like to say any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated. Also, I'm not super computer savvy so please bear with me.

Yesterday I moved my computer setup to another room in my house. I'm on a iMac, 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 computer running OSX 10.6.8. I also have a 2 year old WD 2TB external HD which has been serving as storage for all my photos/videos.

I haven't had any issues with anything up until the move. When I plugged everything back in my external HD wasn't mounted. When I open Disk Utility it sees the HD but everything is grayed out (Verify Disk Permissions/Repair Disk Permissions, etc.) When I get info on the drive it says Partition Map Scheme: Unformatted.

I have no idea why this happened and have been searching the web for a solution but can't seem to find anything.

Again, any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated!

A very, very sad mom

 

[Kaveman]

Have you unplugged everything done a restart and then replug your drive?

 

[scrltrider]

I have unplugged & restarted numerous times numerous times, nothing changes.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

Partition Map Scheme: Unformatted

If you did not delete the partitions then I feel it leaves two options.
1) The partition map got corrupt somehow.
2) There may be more serious hardware failure of the drive.

Please could you post a screen shot of Disk Utility with that drive and Partition tab selected so we can be sure.

 

[scrltrider]

Hi and thank you for your response, yes, here is a screenshot:

(sorry I guess it's an attachment, not sure how to insert it?)

 

[scrltrider]

I apologize, I think this is what you wanted:

 

[Kaveman]

Just a general reminder, It's important to eject external drives before unplugging them.

Your next step is to either get some file recovery software, or repartition the drive to start again.

Sidenote: There were many cheap hard-drives on the market after the floods in Thailand that should never have been sold, we've seen a lot of failures.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi scrltrider,

Sorry that this has happened, but there are plenty of programs for recovering lost files, one such is Disk Drill. I know it can recover erased files, but I'm not sure how it handles files from deleted partitions. It's a free download and you only have to pay for it if it finds files that can be recovered.

Just for you info and future reference what you should see when connecting an external drive and opening Disk Utility is something like my screen shot of a small drive I use on the go.


If there is no chance of any recovery then as Kaveman said repartition, just click the + icon at the bottom to create a new one. I would use Mac OS Extended (journaled).