Recent content by DR_Luke

It is too bad that you didn't think to backup what you could in the small window of opportunity you had. A dropped drive = physical damage. To recover the data, you will need to deal with the physical damage first. If your data is of value, send the drive to a reputable data recovery lab who...

Is it safe to run chkdsk Your hard drive clearly has some physical issues which are preventing access to your files. By running chkdsk, it is likely causing irreversible damage to your file tables. If your data is worth a few hundred dollars or more, seek professional data recovery services...

If there is data on the drive that you wish to recover, it is best to stop now and seek professional data recovery assistance. The drive has physical issues that were likely compounded by your attempt to format it. A list of reputable and affordable labs I have compiled and suggest are...

The odds are, the heads crashed down onto the platters when you initially dropped it and it has been gradually getting worse until it finally failed completely. If you backed up your data or have nothing of value on the drive, simply replace it. If you do have data on the drive of value that...

It is not uncommon for passports to fail. It could be anything from a damaged circuit board, firmware, media and/or heads. If your data is of any value to you, it is probably best to seek professional data recovery assistance and ignore any advice about running programs that is likely to...

It sounds like the drive is starting to fail. With professional data recovery tools, it could still be a relatively simple and cheap recovery. But, it could also be a weak/failing read/write head. So, if you value your files, it is best to seek the assistance of a pro before it gets worse. A...

If you can't feel any movement in the SSD, it is time to seek professional data recovery assistance.

If you value the file, you may need to bite the bullet and contact your local data recovery professional before it fails beyond recovery.

Do not initialize the drive. Writing to a failing drive only causes more damage. When you imaged the drive with ddrescue, were you able to image the entire drive without any read errors?

If Windows isn't even seeing the physical SSD, it is either an issue with your system board or the SSD iteself. You can try to troubleshoot which by connecting your SSD into another system and see if it detects there or by connecting another SSD into your system and see if your system sees that...

The command, itself, shouldn't have killed the drive. When you go to device manager or disk management, you don't see it listed at all? Can you post a few screenshots?

Although 95% of the Seagate 7200.12 drives we get these days are fatal head crashes, this drive does not sound like such a case. It could be starting to crash, but right now, it is likely still recoverable without even opening the drive. But, you will likely want to seek the assistance of a...

Are you sure your hard drive is formatted? Can you show a screenshot of your drives in disk management?

At this point, it is likely an issue with the connection to the drive. But, if you continue to use it in this manner, it could eventually become a bigger issue. Be sure to backup the data right way, replacing the drive and then look to repair it afterward.