My desktop PC got fried in the storms that rolled through Houston a week ago. Pulled the HD this morning to try and transfer files to my external HD. However, when I load it up it shows 914gb free of 914gb with absolutely no data. Is there any way to recover the files? Not a ton on their but a few docs that I would prefer to keep if I can get them back.

Electrical shock wouldn't wipe an entire drive back to empty. It may blow the read head on a spin drive or controller/storage chips on ssd's/nvme's but not wipe it. That takes magnatism to flip the bits. Are you sure you pulled the right drive?

An encrypted drive should show an unreadable partition or if it does pull up the partition, you would need your windows credentials to log into it to pull data.

Didn't make sense to me either.

Only 1 HD in the box so no mistakes. Pulled it and popped it into a HD docking station that I bought years ago. Connects to the laptop and shows as an external HD. When I open it shows nothing and says that it is 914 of 914 free.

The other part that caught my attention..... this is a 1 TB HD. If it had truly been wiped clean, shouldn't it show 930ish GB instead of 914? My laptop is also a 1TB and the C drive on there is currently 852 of 937.

Also, verified that I can save a file to the drive with no issues.

Maby, it could be hidden GB if its not initialized/partitioned. No idea if its not that. Maby a dead storage chip if ssd?

I'd try a "free" recovery program to see if it sees any data on the drive. When you look at disk manager, does it show the drive as RAW? Do you see any partitions?

chjoak said:

---

---

Your missing gb are that recovery partition for windows. Its a 16gb partition. Since you can see the whole partition for data and looks like full access, i have no idea whats going on.

Did you create a new partition when you mounted the drive in your other machine? I've never seen an OS partition called Data. I'm worried you might have inadvertently formated the old OS partition.

No. I literally removed the drive from the tower and plugged it into a HD docking station that is connected to my laptop via USB. That is it.

The volume being labeled "DATA" makes me think there is another drive ("system" or similar) still in the original machine. Was the drive you pulled a 3.5" or 2.5" SATA device? If so, go back to the original machine and look for an SSD... they don't usually look like a normal drive. Look for a small tab the size of a credit card plugged into a PCIe slot, or similar.

akaggie05 said:

---

The volume being labeled "DATA" makes me think there is another drive ("system" or similar) still in the original machine. Was the drive you pulled a 3.5" or 2.5" SATA device? If so, go back to the original machine and look for an SSD... they don't usually look like a normal drive. Look for a small tab the size of a credit card plugged into a PCIe slot, or similar.

---

winner, winner...... Haven't located it yet but I went and looked at the amazon listing from when I bought this tower in 2019 and it was listed as having a 1TB HDD + 512GB SSD.

This looks to be the SSD. Do they make adapters for this type to transfer the data?


Edit.... answered my own question. It is a B+M Key connection and they have adapters on Amazon

Great news! That is an NVMe drive.

Amazon sells this reader that will also work for 2.5" SSDs and 3.5" spinning disks. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXRKM58Z I have it and it works great.

When you mount the drive, you'll have to take ownership of your user profile directory. C:\Users\chjoak

This might take a few minutes, depending on how many files you have in your profile.

AmC_OldSarge said:

---

Great news! That is an NVMe drive.

Amazon sells this reader that will also work for 2.5" SSDs and 3.5" spinning disks. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXRKM58Z I have it and it works great.

When you mount the drive, you'll have to take ownership of your user profile directory. C:\Users\chjoak

This might take a few minutes, depending on how many files you have in your profile.

---

His is a M.2 SATA, not an NVME. I dont think that reader will work.

ADATA SU800 512GB M.2 2280 SATA 3D NAND Internal SSD (ASU800NS38-512GT-C) https://a.co/d/1Icw5sY

I ended up buying.....
https://a.co/d/fzZuZdv