External hard drive not recognized (old file recovery)

[blastin528]

I recently purchased a new hard drive for my system (256 GB SSD to 1TB SSD) and installed it with no problem. I purchased a 2.5" SATA Hard Drive to USB 3.0 enclosure to assist with copying the original hard drive to the new hard drive, and discovered that this could also essentially be used to turn my old hard drive into a portable external hard drive.

Fast forward to earlier this evening when I decided that I would also try to recover files from an older (2007) laptop that had crashed using my new toy. I removed the SATA hard drive (HDD), inserted into the enclosure and plugged it in.

My issue is that when I plug it in, the drive is not being recognized. It is visible in the device manager under both the disk drives and storage controllers trees, and is showing as "unknown" under disk management. (I tried to initialize the disk as GPT and got a message that said it was not convertible because the size is less than the minimum size required for GPT disks. Also tried to use the MiniTool Partition Wizard as found in another thread with no luck, it says that the drive is 0.00 MB),

Question is, can I recover this drive? Is there a way to access the information on it, or have my system recognize it in some way that would give me access to the files? Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[brooksndun]

how are you plugging it in?? usb??

 

[blastin528]

Yes. As stated I am using a SATA hard drive to USB 3.0 converter. So it is plugged in to a USB port

 

[brooksndun]

Well, try Testdisk 7... (most hardcore- requires some knowledge and googling to use but will show you if it detects drive.. then you probably don't need to try the others below if it doesn't..) TestDisk Download - CGSecurity

try Recuva (nice and free) https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

Try OnTrack Data Recovery Software | Download FREE Trial | Kroll Ontrack

try Data Recovery Wizard. ( i like this one.) Hard Drive Data Recovery Software. Free Download Disk Data Recovery Tool - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional

try Stellar data recovery (also like this one..) Windows Data Recovery | Undelete Files from Windows 10, 8, 7, XP

If they still can't see it, you need to troubleshoot by connecting it via the normal SATA way.. not usb..

then try a recovery usb/CD disk and see if those same programs can detect it.. in recovery mode from booting by a recovery USB/CD..

 

[ilora iava]

Do not worry, your data isn't lost, the possible reason behind disk not getting recognized is: the file system may have gone RAW. But you can still hope for recovery using data recovery tool. As brooksndun has mentioned some data recovery tool, you can try any of that, however you can also try the following one, as this is free to download, thought might be helpful.
Recover Data from USB not Formatted | Data Recovery from USB Drive after Not Formatted Error