the device is not ready

[lovemetrue]

Attempting to restore an extended hard drive. After the program scan it identified my lost files, once i selected all, after a few minutes it said no files recovered.....under reason....it read...the device not ready.....any suggestions.

[DennisD]

Hi lovemetrue, and welcome to the forum.

 

A possible fix for that, pointed out by someone else recently, is to make sure the target drive hasn't gone to "sleep" by opening a folder on the target drive to "wake it up" before trying to access it with Recuva.

 

I have an internal drive with spins down after an audible click, but the others nod off silently.

 

Hope that may help.

[Axdsilva]

Same problem, but I already turned off all those usb off power stuff on my laptop

 

It says excellent and all but of the 93,000 files I have only 21,000 on my hardrive were recovered and now I'm doing it manually and well same progress, most are telling me when I try

'device is not ready'

 

suggestions? any would help right now

[Alan_B]

So that we may understand your situation,

please supply a screen shot of Windows Disk Management showing your drives,

and a statement of which drive holds lost files and which is to receive the recovered files.

[Axdsilva]

 

F holds the lost files

D is where I am transfering them too

 

 

edit:I should add that I was using the freeware version and the device was 'quick formatted'

 

Also I have a lot of video and compressed files and those that I have recovered, ones with passwords aren't opening, I get error messages, is Recuva meant to recover them, or is it just not built for that cause none of them open

Edited March 28, 2013 by Axdsilva

[Alan_B]

I suggest that when you are ready to restore

you first Launch Windows Explorer and view the contents of Drive D:\

You may observe that the Address Bar initially NOT show the path but a blue "progress bar" as the drive spins up and the 'device is not ready'.

When the progress is completed the path is shown and the device should then be ready for you to start transferring.

 

I do not know anything about password protected compressed files - but others here can advise.

[Axdsilva]

Sorry, I didn't understand what I was suppose to do when I open my D drive

 

edit: Also I see that the adresses on the recuva go f:\? for a lot of them

 

Is this something affecting recuva?

Edited March 29, 2013 by Axdsilva

[Nergal]

no it just means recuva is unsure of the file's original location

[Alan_B]

Sorry, I didn't understand what I was suppose to do when I open my D drive

I thought it would be obvious.

 

You started with

... most are telling me when I try 'device is not ready'

 

I advised

... drive spins up and the 'device is not ready'.

When the progress is completed the path is shown and the device should then be ready for you to start transferring.

 

The fact is that making use of a drive that has gone to sleep - will EVENTUALLY wake it up and start spinning and THEN it will be ready for use.

Obviously when Recuva restores to a sleeping drive it aborts and you see the explanation 'device is not ready'

BUT my procedure of simply looking at drive D:\ with Windows Explorer is sufficient to wake up the sleeping disk and after 5 or 10 seconds the progress bar completes and is replaced by the path,

and at that time you can then proceed to restore to D:\ the lost files you have selected from F:\ and this time you should NOT be told 'device is not ready'

[Axdsilva]

It didn't work

 

Opened explorer to both drives, but it still gives me the 'device is not ready' and didn't recover the file

[Alan_B]

Opened explorer to both drives, but it still gives me the 'device is not ready' and didn't recover the file

Did you have separate instances of Windows Explorer,

and were they both showing the contents of the relevant drives at the instant you were tying to save and wer being told 'device not ready' ?

 

How about setting up Recuva so it as ready to save to D:\,

and at that instant using Windows Explorer to copy a visible (not deleted and not lost) file from F:\ to D:\

and then telling Recuva to Save.

Please report if windows Explorer successfully copies and Recuva still fails to save with 'device not ready'

[Axdsilva]

Didn't work

 

Nothing appeared in either explorer, and despite saying quality excellent, it still said device not ready and nothing was recovered

 

???

[Alan_B]

Nothing appeared in either explorer, and despite saying quality excellent, it still said device not ready and nothing was recovered

It is impossible for anything (including RECUVA) to save to drive D:\ whilst drive D:\ is not ready,

and drive D:\ is almost certainly not ready if Windows Explorer cannot see its contents - unless of course it has no contents

 

I am sorry but from post #3 I was expecting that there would be files present on both D:\ and F:\

Reviewing your screen shot in post #5 this is possibly not true.

 

Please create a small file on both D:\ and F:\,

e.g. use Notepad and create a single line with the word "Test" and save it as D:\Test.txt and F:\Test.txt

 

Now use Recuva again and wait until it has completed a scan and is ready to recover.

At this stage launch Windows Explorer and confirm that it can show both D:\Test.txt and F:\Test.txt

If it cannot see both files then wait until they appear before you launch Recover.

It they never appear then I cannot understand what is wrong with your devices - they got me beat.

[Axdsilva]

I thought that I am not supposed to add files so they don't overwrite files I am trying to recover

[Alan_B]

Only one file cluster amongst millions will be over-written when you write to F:\ which holds your lost files,

but you can refrain if you wish

.

No damage at all will be done by writing to drive D:\,

and this is the most important test.

If the test file on D:\ is not visible when the "device is not ready" then there is no way that Recuva is at fault - it is your hardware or operating system that is wrong.

 

If the test file on D:\ is visible then Recuva should be able to restore files to D:\,

unless of course too much time that has elapsed between Recuva scanning F:\ and your initiating restore that drive F:\ has gone to sleep as is the guilty "device is not ready".

[Axdsilva]

D drive doesn't seem to be at fault, a few added files on it work, but none of the 'recuva'd' files do

[Alan_B]

I am stuck.

 

The only possibility I can suggest is to connect these two drives to a different computer that also has Recuva installed,

and try again.

[Axdsilva]

well i'll ask again for any help if I do or something, thanks anyway...

[DennisD]

Just one thought springs to mind for me, and not having any technical background myself, either Alan or one of the other guys may want to comment on this, but I noticed early on in the thread that you appear to have two "Active" drives.

 

As far as I'm aware, I believe this can cause issues, and there's absolutely no reason why your target drive (D: Data) needs to be "Active". Assuming here it is only a back up drive.

 

This may have absolutely nothing to do with your issue, but at the risk of being "miles off", it would be remiss of me not to mention it because I'm sure in certain circumstances, two "Active" drives can cause problems.

 

Just a thought.

[Alan_B]

As far as I'm aware, I believe this can cause issues, and there's absolutely no reason why your target drive (D: Data) needs to be "Active". Assuming here it is only a back up drive.

 

This may have absolutely nothing to do with your issue, but at the risk of being "miles off", it would be remiss of me not to mention it because I'm sure in certain circumstances, two "Active" drives can cause problems.

I second that warning.

 

Until February my Samsung HDD still had an Active "System Reserved" Partition for Windows 7.

This was in addition to a new installation of Windows 7 on my newly installed OCZ SSD.

"It never did me no harm."

In February my WDC HDD was trashed,

and when searching for solutions I was warned by several experts that two active disks is taboo - it leads to grief.

 

My problem was upon start-up when the active partitions are very significant,

and is almost certainly caused by race hazards arising from different HDD's and SSD's taking different times to spin up or whatever SSD's do to prepare,

and Windows is not a proper deterministic real time system so race hazards can go wrong.

 

I do not believe that two active partitions was the fundamental cause of my problem,

but it might have contributed.

I immediately took heed of the experts when they warned me and I deactivated the unwanted partition on Samsung.

 

Windows works best in a following wind when everything is in its favour - it is always ready to punish infractions.

[JMP1957]

I have same issue.  Removed drive from affected PC, Deep Scanned and found thousands of recoverable files.  I tried restoring to my HD, a network drive and also an SD card.  They all show up great in Explorer but I get "device not ready" in every scenario.  One other thing.  The original computer apparently would not start and someone chose to restore from recovery partition (Lenovo) which it did and so in Explorer it shows a file structure for a new setup of Windows.  The files needed were from drive before Windows got set up again.  

[Victor Neubern]

I Have just used Recova and also had the same problem.  Picutres were recovered, but when I tried with films, I got the message "device is not ready".  I repeated the process several times with the same bad result, even closing and restarting the software.  I checked that the origin and destination drives and they were active. Finally, I re-selected the origin drive on the top left of the screen (it was showing C: but orgin was E:), and it worked.!

Last night the process took hours; I had to leave it running overnight.  This morning it took just a couple of minutes.  Why???