Can not access my external HDD on my PC but works on my TV?! Solutions?

[KrEnX47]

Hello to everyone, I've got a bit of an isue with my external HDD. I've been using it for a long time, I got about 1TB of files on it from 10 years back (music, pictures, videos, important files etc.). And suddenly one day I noticed it doesn't allow me to delete files from it. Every time I tried to delete a file from the disk it said it's in use or something like that. So I disconnected it from the USB port and since then I can't access it. Works totaly fine on TV, can listen to my music, watch movies etc.

Tried to plug it in to my laptop, same story. All I get is computer telling me to format it.

In disk manager it shows up as RAW File System
Here is a picture of how it shows up, the W disk is the one I'm having problem with and the H is my working one.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16267176/Online/Pic1.jpg

If I right-click Disk2 and set it to Offline, I see my disk load up for 1-2 seconds before it goes offline.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16267176/Online/Pic2.jpg
As you can see on this picture, it showed up as Local Disk W, and I even managed to open it for half a second and saw all the folders etc. before it shuts down.

So it looks like it's fine I just dont know how to change it from RAW back to NTFS, and everywhere I read it's not possible and that disk needs to be formated and that I should use recovery tool, but dont wanna use that unless there's really no other option, and seeing it actually shows up and I can open it(even tho it's just for a second) when I set it to offline in disk manager seems like there could be a simple solution for it as disk seems to be normal otherwise.

There's where I need your help with! If you got any ideas I'd appreciate it a lot.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey KrEnX47. That sounds a bit odd. I'd recommend that before anything else - you try to access the drive via Linux Live USB/CD to see if you can recover the files this way. Having in mind the drive work with the TV I have high hopes that this should work. On the other hand if it doesn't you could take a look at some of the data recovery options from this thread here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
Hopefully you find something useful there.
You could also search the net for a partition recovery tool to try and fix the partition itself.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[plaintuts]

Most probably a virus/malware messing with the drive path.

Since the drive is totally fine on a different platform

Sadly the external drive may also be spreading it to other computers, try to update your anti virus software then scan the external drive

 

[KrEnX47]

Hey KrEnX47. That sounds a bit odd. I'd recommend that before anything else - you try to access the drive via Linux Live USB/CD to see if you can recover the files this way. Having in mind the drive work with the TV I have high hopes that this should work. On the other hand if it doesn't you could take a look at some of the data recovery options from this thread here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
Hopefully you find something useful there.
You could also search the net for a partition recovery tool to try and fix the partition itself.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

I've got Recuva already installed tho gotta take some time to see how it works, did one scan and that was done in a few seconds so not sure if I did it right. I'll take some time tomorrow. Tho I'd probably need another disk to transfer the files on wont I? That's kind of the reason I'm trying to resolve this without needing to recover as there's over 1TB of files, dont have that much space anywhere right now.

Also what's this Linux Live USB/CD you're talking about?

Most probably a virus/malware messing with the drive path.

Since the drive is totally fine on a different platform

Sadly the external drive may also be spreading it to other computers, try to update your anti virus software then scan the external drive

Well that could be in case I copied something on it. But, thing is when I set to scan it my antivirus says he can't access the disk to scan it.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Basically it's a portable and bootable version of Linux, which can help you fix a lot if issues when you boot your computer with it when Windows has a problem or there's an issue like this. It can often recognize "unrecognizeable" partitions that have become RAW and you can't access them via Windows. It's a free and open source software, so you don't have to pay anything for it, just google "Linux live usb" and the first couple of links should do the job.

 

[riopelnet112]

when i try to use the RUN., it says “patch not found in G”

 

[KrEnX47]

Basically it's a portable and bootable version of Linux, which can help you fix a lot if issues when you boot your computer with it when Windows has a problem or there's an issue like this. It can often recognize "unrecognizeable" partitions that have become RAW and you can't access them via Windows. It's a free and open source software, so you don't have to pay anything for it, just google "Linux live usb" and the first couple of links should do the job.

Ok, thank you . I've used this and got access to my files. Copying now some part of it and transfering to my PC's disk. So I just copy it all off the disk and then format it? Or can I just somehow fix the partition of it as this copying might take a full day Well 4 hours for 360Gb for current copying.

Edit: Tho this is kinda pissing me off now, set to copy all 360GB at once, started great 30MB/s, said 3 hours, got few errors for some files and I skipped them (were not important) but then noticed speed of copying was getting lower and lower and I dont know why, dropped down to 14MB/s saying 5 hours left and when I went to search some folders everything freezed and had to restart PC. Now copying slower. folder per folder but still speed started on 14MB/s and now continues to drop, it's at 6,9MB/s now.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well no matter how much time it takes, the priority and most important thing right now is that you get your data back, trust me, you're pretty lucky to be able to get the files this way.
After you complete this I'd recommend that you reformat the drive and then run the manufacturer's diagnostic tool to see what's the actual situation with the HDD and if it has any issues.

 

[KrEnX47]

Well no matter how much time it takes, the priority and most important thing right now is that you get your data back, trust me, you're pretty lucky to be able to get the files this way.
After you complete this I'd recommend that you reformat the drive and then run the manufacturer's diagnostic tool to see what's the actual situation with the HDD and if it has any issues.

Yep, you're damn right . Anyways got all my important files off the disk, the rest is about 1TB of movies and some Fraps Recordings I made in some games, now I got no more space and since I need to get that 1TB off the disk before I can format it I tried to test out to recover my 2nd disk that broke around same time as this one (didn't mention it yet before),

Anyways this one broke after I set to copy 200GB of files and I went out so it finishes when I get home. But when I got home it was still copying everything was laggy, tried to cancel copying nothing happend, I just set my PC to log off, and it was logging off for ever so I just unplugged the disk which made it to log off in a second then. Since then it wasn't working anymore. Tried on linux now as well and it shows up but can't enter it, now I just decided I dont give a f*ck what's on the disk(was only TV shows that I can re-download) and just format it so I got space for this other files but for some reason it even fails to format. Tho it's my biggest disk 2TB, but feeling right now I should just buy new and throw this one away, as it was acting weird before already, when I plugged it at my friends TV it was making some weird sounds inside and didn't work, tho it was fine on my own TV. You think there's any hope for this disk or should I just throw it away? Honestly dont care atm if I could have similar problems with it later even if I manage to format it, but doesn't seems like it will go through.

So my thoughts right now are to just buy a new one, then copy the rest of this files off the other disk so I can format it.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well it definitely sounds like there's an issue with the drive, especially if there were some unusual sounds/noises coming from it. If it's out of warranty and doesn't have hardware encryption, you could try to take it out of the enclosure and connect it directly to your motherboard via a SATA connection to see if the same thing happens again, but I honestly can't tell what's the situation with it before you test it with an HDD diagnostic tool (preferably - the manufacturer's) and see if you get any errors or bad sectors etc.
Other than that - good job on recovering the important data you had. As you said the other stuff is downloadable, so at least that's a good thing. As for the Fraps videos, that's a bit of a loss but you could always do new and better ones.

 

[KrEnX47]

Well it definitely sounds like there's an issue with the drive, especially if there were some unusual sounds/noises coming from it. If it's out of warranty and doesn't have hardware encryption, you could try to take it out of the enclosure and connect it directly to your motherboard via a SATA connection to see if the same thing happens again, but I honestly can't tell what's the situation with it before you test it with an HDD diagnostic tool (preferably - the manufacturer's) and see if you get any errors or bad sectors etc.
Other than that - good job on recovering the important data you had. As you said the other stuff is downloadable, so at least that's a good thing. As for the Fraps videos, that's a bit of a loss but you could always do new and better ones.

Alright, a little update on things. I will try all that when I find the time if maybe I can somehow save the disk, but right now I just decided to buy a new one, so it's good for sure. Waiting for it to arrive as I ordered online cause it's cheaper. But as usual my luck just can't stay for ever, it's always something to mess everything up. Randomly today I updated lattest updates for windows and delayed PC restart, that was keep asking me for, untill night when I finally decided to go to sleep. Now it's keep restarting my PC in loops without even loading the windows so I figured it's something with disk, loaded the linux from usb (so good that I had it) tried to access the disk there and got this error:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16267176/Online/DiskError.jpg

So yah, my head's getting black in clouds right now, just got all those files on my main PC's disk + now including the new pictures / videos etc. all locked away from me in a whole.

Looks like I'm gonna be ordering more than one disk if this one really just died randomly, can this error tell you any specifics about it? I'm not really that good with reading errors.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Talk about bad luck indeed...
You could try doing a System Restore to the point before you've updated to see if that fixes the issue. And if this doesn't help, then I'd recommend that you try the advice in the error message - click start menu type in run and press "enter", type in CMD and press "enter" again, then type in the following chkdsk /f x: (where X is the letter of the drive you wish to check and fix, so don't forget to change it) and press enter again and wait for the process to finish. Note that it is possible (although not very likely) to corrupt some data with the chkdsk command, but it looks like if the system restore option doesn't fix the issue - there's not much choice.
...although you could try to connect the drive to another computer and try to recover the data with some of the data recovery options from the thread link I gave you in my first post.
Good luck!

 

[sourabh9489]

Basically it's a portable and bootable version of Linux, which can help you fix a lot if issues when you boot your computer with it when Windows has a problem or there's an issue like this. It can often recognize "unrecognizeable" partitions that have become RAW and you can't access them via Windows. It's a free and open source software, so you don't have to pay anything for it, just google "Linux live usb" and the first couple of links should do the job.

Ok, thank you . I've used this and got access to my files. Copying now some part of it and transfering to my PC's disk. So I just copy it all off the disk and then format it? Or can I just somehow fix the partition of it as this copying might take a full day Well 4 hours for 360Gb for current copying.

Edit: Tho this is kinda pissing me off now, set to copy all 360GB at once, started great 30MB/s, said 3 hours, got few errors for some files and I skipped them (were not important) but then noticed speed of copying was getting lower and lower and I dont know why, dropped down to 14MB/s saying 5 hours left and when I went to search some folders everything freezed and had to restart PC. Now copying slower. folder per folder but still speed started on 14MB/s and now continues to drop, it's at 6,9MB/s now.

Hi Buddy, Can u tell me how you did this. I am facing this issue and it just pissing me off . I can access the drive on TV but not on my laptop. Can you please just elaborate a little bit step by step how you did it as I don't have much knowledge about Linux way of working.

 

[The Paladin]

plugging and unplugging an external drive (SATA or usb stick) without first ejecting the media through windows/shutting down TV will cause the problem your are encountering.
you go great suggestions and I hope you recover your data.