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I just recently purchased a a 4TB Backup Plus and installed about 1.5GB worth of data. I connected it using the USB 3.0 input on my motherboard. Works fine.

I then decided to use the bare drive itself, internally. So I took apart the external and opened it up. I removed the HDD and installed it in my tower. When I powered on the PC (Windows 8.1 Pro), and tried to open the drive, it gave me the:

This drive must be formatted, blah, blah, blah…

Then:

…the volume does not contain a recognized file system, blah, blah…

I’ve unplugged it from the tower (Desktop) and used the bottom adapter which housed the external drive and connected it using the USB 3.0 again and it works fine. It just won’t work internally using the SATA III ports.

The drive model is ST4000dm000-1f2168 and my file system is NTFS. When I first plugged it in using the USB 3.0, I did a full format.

Giacomo1968
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1 Answers1

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It's not saying that the partition isn't recognized. It's saying you have to initialize the drive. This is because the WD bridge that the drive plugs into uses some of the space on the drive for it's firmware. The hardware then sets the first part of the drive a little ahead of the start. It's like raid cards that handle their own table layouts. You could copy the data off the drive by using HxD to find where the partition table starts and then using something like DD to start reading the data into a file from that point onwards, but that's kind of a waist of time. It might also be possible to have DD offset when it's inside the computer. I wouldn't suggest it if you don't have a backup. DD is known as Disk Destroyer for a good reason.

Remember, this is setting the beginning of the drive, not the first partition. So swapping the drive either way will cause trouble.

If you want to use the drive as both an internal and external drive you'll need to purchase an after market USB 3.0/eSata bridge and put the drive in that instead. You'll still have to copy the data off the drive first.

Kayot
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