- Aug 18, 2007
- 25
- 0
- 18,530
Hello there, I realise first of all there are a variety of posts dotted about with people asking for fixes to their hard drive problems, however as far as I have read I've not been able to find a fix for mine. I'm posting here rather than somewhere like the TestDisk forums because I'm hoping there will be a broader range of solutions offered rather than those just related to that program (though I'm happy for both, what I mean is it's better not to put all your eggs in one basket).
Anyway, I have a Western Digital My Passport Essential 1Tb hard drive, it is less than 4 months old and although it has been carried about in my bag, it has been secure and has not suffered any obvious physical damage. It is used almost exclusively for storing music, of which I have a lot and have been collecting for some time. When I was playing music through iTunes about a week ago now some songs refused to play saying they could not be found. I realised at that point it was all songs stored in a specific folder on that drive which would not play so I deleted that folder at no great loss. Then however more and more songs started to not play and I realised it was not an isolated problem. I powered down the drive and my laptop and restarted them both.
Upon plugging my drive back in windows offered me the Scan and Fix option including to fix bad sectors (which I ticked). However after allowing this to run its course my drive no longer shows it containing any data whatsoever in windows explorer. Instead when I plug in the drive I am told I need to format it to use it. I have refused this option everytime when prompted as I know there is still some data on there. Something to note there is a single apparent "click" when powering the drive down, though the drive vibrates mildly and appears to run as normal generally.
I have run TestDisk to attempt to fix the partition but a lot of the time using the programme I get Buffer I/O errors. Also parts of TestDisk take unreasonably long times to run (I do realise if I wanted to image the disk it would take hours though). If I leave the program to run it does eventually find my partition though not without first reporting a bunch of Read Error at x (lba=y). I tried fixing the boot sectors in the advanced options, this took a very long time but then it gave some message about MFT? and frankly I am not sure as such whether the fix worked or not.
Any help would be greatly appreciated in recovering my drive or the data on it. If you need logs or pictures just ask, I have contacted a data recovery company but their prices are just too high, I am only a student but this music is more important to me than it would first appear and contains a lot of stuff that does not exist anywhere else from a number of well known artists. Like I said I am only a student but my birthday passed recently so if anyone does manage to solve my problem I'd be happy to give £50 or something for the time and trouble.
Many thanks in advance,
Thomas
Anyway, I have a Western Digital My Passport Essential 1Tb hard drive, it is less than 4 months old and although it has been carried about in my bag, it has been secure and has not suffered any obvious physical damage. It is used almost exclusively for storing music, of which I have a lot and have been collecting for some time. When I was playing music through iTunes about a week ago now some songs refused to play saying they could not be found. I realised at that point it was all songs stored in a specific folder on that drive which would not play so I deleted that folder at no great loss. Then however more and more songs started to not play and I realised it was not an isolated problem. I powered down the drive and my laptop and restarted them both.
Upon plugging my drive back in windows offered me the Scan and Fix option including to fix bad sectors (which I ticked). However after allowing this to run its course my drive no longer shows it containing any data whatsoever in windows explorer. Instead when I plug in the drive I am told I need to format it to use it. I have refused this option everytime when prompted as I know there is still some data on there. Something to note there is a single apparent "click" when powering the drive down, though the drive vibrates mildly and appears to run as normal generally.
I have run TestDisk to attempt to fix the partition but a lot of the time using the programme I get Buffer I/O errors. Also parts of TestDisk take unreasonably long times to run (I do realise if I wanted to image the disk it would take hours though). If I leave the program to run it does eventually find my partition though not without first reporting a bunch of Read Error at x (lba=y). I tried fixing the boot sectors in the advanced options, this took a very long time but then it gave some message about MFT? and frankly I am not sure as such whether the fix worked or not.
Any help would be greatly appreciated in recovering my drive or the data on it. If you need logs or pictures just ask, I have contacted a data recovery company but their prices are just too high, I am only a student but this music is more important to me than it would first appear and contains a lot of stuff that does not exist anywhere else from a number of well known artists. Like I said I am only a student but my birthday passed recently so if anyone does manage to solve my problem I'd be happy to give £50 or something for the time and trouble.
Many thanks in advance,
Thomas
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