Hacking Feedback Hardware Homebrew Misc Wii corrupted my 1TB External HDD, Computer doesn't recognize HDD at all, and there's no space data on it:

[PentaWind]

So one day, I formatted my External HDD to Fat32 for GameCube and Wii games but then when I realized that my Wii doesn't recognize my HDD at all, I checked on my laptop and the Hard Drive doesn't appear at all, not even on disk manager but it does appear on device manager, however when I check the hard drive there, there's no space data, no amount of space is being displayed in and the populate button doesn't work.

How do I fix this? My Wii it's the culprit of this because this was the first time that I plugged my HDD on the Wii and it did that, also the HDD does some weird noises two times whenever I connect it.

 

[Tri-Z]

You maybe able to format is from command line prompt, I’m not sure though. Google format a hardrive from command line to instructions.
There might be damage to the drive if hearing sounds that aren’t normal when plug it in.

 

[Kwyjor]

also the HDD does some weird noises two times whenever I connect it.

That's a possible sign of hardware failure. There's no way your Wii would have done that; it's just coincidence.

Anyway, if it's a standard FAT32-formatted drive, try testdisk or Easeus.

 

[PentaWind]

Even all of the programs used for fixing hard drives don't detect the external hard drive unfortunately.

 

[Kwyjor]

all of the programs used for fixing hard drives

I very much doubt you tried "all of the programs". I doubt you tried Spinrite.

If you did try "all of the programs", what else do you think you're going to do? You can either throw it out or take it to a professional.

 

[Disorarara]

if it's an HDD, sounds like a mechanical failure

 

[morning_glory]

External HDD info ??
Pay closer attention to the USB plugs/sockets for damage.
Perhaps the cable is damaged (?),

 

[The Real Jdbye]

And this is why I started to hate HDDs. No matter how you treat them, they have a short lifespan, and sometimes don't last longer than a year. And this seems especially true for 2.5" HDDs, they seem to be more cheaply made than 3.5" drives because I have had so many of them fall within a year, while I've only had a single 3.5" drive personally fail, and that lasted 7 years, and it was heavily used (24/7 seeding)

On the plus side, you can get a 480/500 GB external SSD these days for a similar price as a 1 TB external HDD, which is still plenty of space for GC/Wii games. So by replacing your (most likely) faulty HDD with a SSD, you won't have to worry about it failing any time soon.

 

[MrQQ]

Even all of the programs used for fixing hard drives don't detect the external hard drive unfortunately.

then the wiii isnt to blame. Its simply hardware failure

 

[morning_glory]

while I've only had a single 3.5" drive personally fail, and that lasted 7 years.

Hell yeah
Old school works for me

My 1st attempt for Wii game storage was a 320gb Verbatim (Samsung) 2.5".
Lasted about 5 Wii boot ups & that was it.
It was hardly ever used. 8hrs of total overall usage. POS

 

[Ryab]

So one day, I formatted my External HDD to Fat32 for GameCube and Wii games but then when I realized that my Wii doesn't recognize my HDD at all, I checked on my laptop and the Hard Drive doesn't appear at all, not even on disk manager but it does appear on device manager, however when I check the hard drive there, there's no space data, no amount of space is being displayed in and the populate button doesn't work.

How do I fix this? My Wii it's the culprit of this because this was the first time that I plugged my HDD on the Wii and it did that, also the HDD does some weird noises two times whenever I connect it.

If the thing isnt being detected by the PC even under disk management then there is likely some form of hardware issue.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hell yeah
Old school works for me

My 1st attempt for Wii game storage was a 320gb Verbatim (Samsung) 2.5".
Lasted about 5 Wii boot ups & that was it.
It was hardly ever used. 8hrs of total overall usage. POS

That is some exceptionally bad luck, I hope you got a replacement.

I have 4 5TB 2.5" externals and 2 of them got hundreds of bad sectors within 9 months, I got both of them replaced under warranty, but I can't trust these drives at all anymore, I'm sure any significant use of them will cause bad sectors to appear on the remaining drives, it seems like the higher density 2.5" drives are just fundamentally flawed... So I have retired those drives (which were used with a Pi) and built a proper home server instead.

And the 2TB hybrid SSHD (Seagate FireCuda) in my laptop, I've replaced 3 or 4 times, they also kept getting bad sectors within a year (not to the same degree, only a handful of bad sectors, but that is bad enough), and obviously, the drive can't be trusted to keep data intact once that happens. But really, it shouldn't be trusted at all, since it seems data corruption is guaranteed to happen within a year (once bad sectors crop up), at least for me.

So I no longer trust HDDs with any data I care about. Better to use SSDs, which rarely fail prematurely and have a much longer expected lifetime, which makes up for the higher cost per TB for most uses. Bulk storage of media is about all HDDs are good for (because 4K media is so big, it's not viable to store it on SSDs)

 

[k0walski]

So one day, I formatted my External HDD to Fat32 for GameCube and Wii games but then when I realized that my Wii doesn't recognize my HDD at all, I checked on my laptop and the Hard Drive doesn't appear at all, not even on disk manager but it does appear on device manager, however when I check the hard drive there, there's no space data, no amount of space is being displayed in and the populate button doesn't work.

How do I fix this? My Wii it's the culprit of this because this was the first time that I plugged my HDD on the Wii and it did that, also the HDD does some weird noises two times whenever I connect it.

Two options - HDD died. Second - lost its file allocation table. I have a solution to try (without any promises), but it requires VirtualBox + Debian/Ubuntu image. If being connected to the virtual machine the drive is recognized (not its partition table as at this stage it's not important), then I could tell you what to do next to try to re-format the drive (of course with 100% data loss). If the drive being connected to the Windows PC makes frequent clicking noises - likely dead.

Just curious, external USB 3.0 drive with single cable without external PSU (not Y-cable - exactly external PSU)?

 

[morning_glory]

Do a quick PC/laptop USB drivers check. (Device Manager)
If USB was (possibly) plugged in wrong, USB (Win) drivers go nuts & fail to function properly.
If so, just uninstall all the troubled drivers, restart your PC & they'll be re-detected & re-installed.
If your drive still fails, then it's the drive's interface, the drive itself &/or cabling & plugs.
USB driver problems will show up again.

Still no HDD details

 

[VictoriousWolf]

I think we should think in the actual prices of HDD's vs SSD's vs SD's based on used vs new, as in how much can you profit from them per $ if not, you're just throwing your money in the trash can.

 

[LNLenost]

I checked on my laptop and the Hard Drive doesn't appear at all, not even on disk manager but it does appear on device manager, however when I check the hard drive there, there's no space data, no amount of space is being displayed in and the populate button doesn't work.

Download Rufus via Microsoft Store, check the options to see all drives, and using the dropdown menu choose Non bootable. Select a formatting method, a label and format it that way. I recovered my corrupted partition using this.

 

[signer-ink-beast]

I guess I'll throw my two cents in. YMMV greatly.

If you can get a Linux Live USB, DVD, or even CD going on your computer (assuming you don't use Linux at all), you can check for one specific thing rather easily. If your external HDD's controller is functioning even a little bit, the Linux kernel should chatter about it in dmesg.

If you are sure your USB cables and ports are good and everything, you try that, and you see the kernel say absolutely nothing about that external USB hard drive, the hard drive has a dead controller and there's nothing you can do about it to recover anything at this point, unless you pay big mulah for help from a data recovery specialist. Unless the data is precious and is absolutely irreplaceable (probably not for a hard drive used with a Wii console, but who knows), it's far cheaper and easier to get a new drive at that rate.

If the kernel sees the drive, you have a shot at using various publicly available tools to try and recover the data. But if not, you're wasting your time. They all depend on that controller being functional.

I tend to see this much more often on solid state stuff rather than hard disks, but I'm only talking from my personal experience. I've had many an SD card die spontaneously with no warning over the, because the controller died and *poof*. Bye-bye, data. It's my least favorite kind of block device failure. Very annoying when it does happen.