4TB Western Digital Hard Drive Detected but not accessable. Shows partitions that weren't created. I have Testdisk error.

[bosler]

I recently set up a rather powerful Desktop computer, with the intent of having it be my workhorse, but also serving as a media server for my music, movies, and TV shows until I set up an actual server. In order to get all media in one place I copied and moved them over from old computer hard drives that were no longer in use, my laptops, etc. onto one centralized 4TB external hard drive. My goal was to get rid of any duplicate items between sources and set up a organized folder structure I could follow on all my computers.

I know I should have backed it all up as soon as it was all together, but previous times when I've had hard drive issues, even if I couldn't access it on Windows, I could always boot up with a Ubuntu install disc and recover the files, so I figured that if anything went wrong, I could solve it.

As you can no doubt guess from the thread title, things have gone wrong beyond my level of knowledge. At first I noticed it was getting slower, even though it was plugged in via a USB 3.0 cable. Soon, I couldn't delete stuff that was in the Recycle Bin that was located on the drive.

Finally, I decided to remove the drive from the casing, and plug it into my computer directly by the SATA ports. As soon as I did this, however, I got nothing. My Computer shows the drive:

My Computer

One of the first things I read online was to try to give the drive another drive letter. I tried this two different ways. First through Disk Management where I named it drive Z, and then through command line diskpart where I named it Y. Both times, the drive letter changed, but I was told that to use the drive I'd have to format it. Obviously this is not an option. (Well, not yet.)

However, while pursuing this angle, I noticed something else troubling. Disk Management shows the drive having three partitions, two empty, and one RAW, but healthy.

DIsk Management

I continued browsing online until I found a program called Testdisk. I ran it, and I got an error.

Testdisk results

I hope someone can help me because I really don't want to lose all of my data. Not backing it up was a stupid move on my end. I know this, but I didn't plan on having it crap out so quickly. The drive is pretty new and hasn't seen much use before this past week.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, Bosler!

I'm truly sorry to hear about your 4 TB WD drive! I strongly recommend testing the drive with WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics tool to check up on the health and S.M.A.R.T. status. It will be really helpful if you could share a screenshot of that as well. In order to determine the SMART status, you'd need to run the quick and the extended test. Here's a link to the software: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=NkRjc1
I'd suggest to try the drive on another computer and see how it will react there.

Keep me posted with the results!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[fzabkar]

@bosler, please DO NOT FORMAT the drive.

The external enclosure is configured with a sector size of 4096 bytes. When you remove such a drive from its enclosure and connect to it via SATA, you expose its native 512-byte sector size and render the file system inaccessible. Sector 0 is still in the same place, so the OS still sees a partition structure, but every other sector is displaced by a factor of 8. In other words, you now have a 4Kn file system on a 512e drive.

You need to reinstall the drive inside its enclosure. However, I would first determine its physical state. To this end I would examine the SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

Please do not perform a full surface scan (long DST) with Data LifeGuard. A drive with head/media issues will be seriously degraded by such a process.

As for TestDisk, it is detecting a single partition with a size of 976745984 sectors.

976745984 sectors x 4096 bytes per sector = 4.00075 TB

Windows is reporting the same partition as having a size of 465.75 GiB.

976 745 984 x 512 bytes = 465.75 GiB

In the event that you do find head/media issues, I would clone your drive with a tool such as ddrescue. Ddrescue understands how to work with bad media.

However, to prepare a "weak" drive for cloning, you should apply the "slow fix" in the following threads:

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29187&start=20
http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.php?t=998&p=4345#p4345

 

[bosler]

@bosler, please DO NOT FORMAT the drive.

The external enclosure is configured with a sector size of 4096 bytes. When you remove such a drive from its enclosure and connect to it via SATA, you expose its native 512-byte sector size and render the file system inaccessible. Sector 0 is still in the same place, so the OS still sees a partition structure, but every other sector is displaced by a factor of 8. In other words, you now have a 4Kn file system on a 512e drive.

You need to reinstall the drive inside its enclosure. However, I would first determine its physical state. To this end I would examine the SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

Please do not perform a full surface scan (long DST) with Data LifeGuard. A drive with head/media issues will be seriously degraded by such a process.

As for TestDisk, it is detecting a single partition with a size of 976745984 sectors.

976745984 sectors x 4096 bytes per sector = 4.00075 TB

Windows is reporting the same partition as having a size of 465.75 GiB.

976 745 984 x 512 bytes = 465.75 GiB

In the event that you do find head/media issues, I would clone your drive with a tool such as ddrescue. Ddrescue understands how to work with bad media.

However, to prepare a "weak" drive for cloning, you should apply the "slow fix" in the following threads:

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29187&start=20
http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.php?t=998&p=4345#p4345

@fzabkar: Here is the result of the CrystalDiskInfo scan. Overall, the drive looks fine, except the Current Pending Sector.

@SuperSoph_WD: As fzabkar suggested, once I plugged the original attachment into the drive, it is once again accessable, however, it's still slow than it should be (and it is plugged in to a USB 3.0 Port.) But at least now I have a shot at recovering things.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

@fzabkar: Here is the result of the CrystalDiskInfo scan. Overall, the drive looks fine, except the Current Pending Sector.

@SuperSoph_WD: As fzabkar suggested, once I plugged the original attachment into the drive, it is once again accessable, however, it's still slow than it should be (and it is plugged in to a USB 3.0 Port.) But at least now I have a shot at recovering things.

I strongly recommend backing up your data from the drive because of the current pending sector count.
Once you've done this, I recommend checking the warranty of the WD HDD here: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Brd157
If it's still covered, contact our tech support and send out your RMA request to get a replacement.
Here are their contacts: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=wGnMby
How to RMA your product: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=VL3T1e

Good luck! Hope I helped!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[fzabkar]

@bosler, in addition to the Current Pending Sector Count, the Read Error Rate is also seriously ill. I suggest that you apply the "slow fix" as explained in the threads I have alluded to. After you have done this, you should find that the cloning process will proceed much more rapidly. However, the drive should not be used thereafter.

Best of luck on a successful recovery.

 

[bosler]

@bosler, in addition to the Current Pending Sector Count, the Read Error Rate is also seriously ill. I suggest that you apply the "slow fix" as explained in the threads I have alluded to. After you have done this, you should find that the cloning process will proceed much more rapidly. However, the drive should not be used thereafter.

Best of luck on a successful recovery.

I have the next couple of days off, so I'll work on the slow fix option. I ended up getting a data recovery program to get most of my data off of it and have been waiting for that to finish, but now that most of it is safe (for now) I have a little less apprehension about going more in depth with it.

@SuperSoph_WD Will the fact that I removed the drive from its casing affect the odds of a warrantied replacement?

 

[fzabkar]

The "slow fix" is a firmware modification that assists with data recovery, but you shouldn't use it to "repair" a drive.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

@SuperSoph_WD Will the fact that I removed the drive from its casing affect the odds of a warrantied replacement?

Hi again, bosler!

Unfortunately, taking the HDD out of the enclosure does void the warranty of the external. Another problem would be the fact that you might not be able to access the drive without it, because it most probably incorporates a hardware encryption (depending on the model of the external WD drive).
I'd suggest you take a look at our warranty services and policies here:
http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Brd157
If you have any questions regarding this, I recommend you to contact our tech support. Here are their contacts as well: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=wGnMby

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[fzabkar]

@bosler, I have seen several cases where users at WD's forum have reported that WD's Tech Support gave them permission to open their enclosures in order to attempt a DIY data recovery without voiding their warranty.