[SOLVED] Corrupt hard drive - What are my next steps?

[Daboa]

I seem to have issues with one of my drives and I'd like help with next steps for troubleshooting. This is not my OS drive, but a drive I use for media. I'm trying to determine if I can salvage the data or repair the drive.

Questions

1. How can I try to salvage the data?
2. What can I do to try to repair the drive?

Symptoms and Description

1. A week ago, I ran Windows Updates and caught up on a few months' worth of updates
2. Windows Explorer takes a long time to load. It hangs on "Not Responding" for like 15 minutes. Finally, it is usable, but I can only access my C drive. If I try to access my E drive, it hangs and then says "E:\ is not accessible; the parameter is incorrect."
3. Disk management also took forever to load, but reports the drive as "healthy"
4. The drive has shared folders, but I can't access them over the network as I usually can
5. Overall, drive E seems to be causing problems!

Event Viewer event

+ System

  - Provider

   [ Name]  Ntfs
   [ Guid]  {dd70bc80-ef44-421b-8ac3-cd31da613a4e}
 
   EventID 55
 
   Version 0
 
   Level 2
 
   Task 0
 
   Opcode 0
 
   Keywords 0x8000000000000000
 
  - TimeCreated

   [ SystemTime]  2021-08-14T23:30:57.369058800Z
 
   EventRecordID 181685
 
   Correlation
 
  - Execution

   [ ProcessID]  4
   [ ThreadID]  9404
 
   Channel System
 
   Computer Raven-PC
 
  - Security

   [ UserID]  S-1-5-18
 

- EventData

  DriveName E:
  DeviceName \Device\HarddiskVolume4
  CorruptionState 0x0
  HeaderFlags 0x22
  Severity Normal
  Origin File System Driver
  Verb Force Proactive Scan
  Description The exact nature of the corruption is unknown. The file system structures need to be scanned online. 
  Signature 0xe2b3f0fb
  Outcome Pseudo Verb
  SampleLength 0
  SampleData 
  SourceFile 0x46
  SourceLine 2413
  SourceTag 432
  AdditionalInfo 0x1
  CallStack Ntfs+0x162e28, Ntfs+0x118b94, Ntfs+0x1ad90, ntoskrnl+0x690b5, ntoskrnl+0x127f95, ntoskrnl+0x1cb448

 

[USAFRet]

"salvage the data"

This is specifically what backups are for. A second/third copy elsewhere.
The physical drive is mostly irrelevant.

From your efforts, it seems you can't access the drive at all within Windows?

I'm thinking a physically corrupt drive.

 

[Ralston18]

Boot into Safe Mode and back up as much data as you can. Verify that the backups are recoverable and readable,

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information,

Disk drives: make, model, capacity, how full?

 

[ac13044]

Backup your data to another hdd. If you have a spare hdd then try this tool. HDDScan you may need to get another hdd as it seems to be failing being corrupt etc but try these methods https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&s...EQFnoECDAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1jokhxFZFAGQdxj90-QDVq or use windows built in software.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&s...EQFnoECCUQBQ&usg=AOvVaw0v924KBJtoalq6lhP9_PK0

 

[Daboa]

Hey, thanks for the input, everyone! This morning, Windows stopped booting, so I spent a few hours troubleshooting until I simply removed my data drive (volume E). After physically disconnecting it, Windows seems happy. Now I'm going to order an external enclosure and, when it arrives, resume my attempts to recover data.

 

[Daboa]

Update: I was able to hook up my drive to another PC and copy all files to another drive. Then I ran CHKDSK on the original drive and didn't find any problems.

Given my initial issue, are there any other diagnostics you would recommend? I'm skeptical of putting the drive back into the original PC and relying on it, given the original issues.

CHKDSK final output:

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.
2861570 MB total disk space.
1327729880 KB in 316513 files.
90920 KB in 58897 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
534811 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
1601893092 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
732562175 total allocation units on disk.
400473273 allocation units available on disk.
Total duration: 1.90 hours (6867797 ms).

 

[Daboa]

Final Update: The issue was the SATA cable! I got a new cable and the everything is working now. Lessons learned:

1. Don't forget to consider that the cables could be the issue
2. A hardware issue with your drive, even if it's not your OS drive, can cause Windows to fail to boot. In my case, I had an infinite loading experience which didn't go away until I disconnected the drive or used a different SATA cable.