Question Disk suddenly turned "RAW". Any chance of recovering the data?

[Ancanar]

Hello.

I am seeking help with my external usb HDD. The disk has it age but HD sentinel was reporting that it is in perfect condition with no error. Actually I think the problem may occured because my system hung during doing "short self test" in HD sentinel, although i am not sure if the problem showed exectly at that momeny. Now when I connect it it cannot be read and Windows magazine manager shows it as "RAW". The HD sentinel still reports perfect health and no problems. Is there any chance of recovering the partition on that drive? Or is professional recovery service the only option?

thank You in advance for any help.

 

[Aeacus]

Or is professional recovery service the only option?

I'd go with this route since DIY often makes it even worse.

 

[USAFRet]

Won't help with this drive and data, but for future reference:

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Ancanar]

Won't help with this drive and data, but for future reference:

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

i do backups but this HDD had non "absulete highest priority data" I can live without it but still prefer to get it back especially that i think the data itself is untouched but something is bad either with the partition header or with the sata to usb interface in the casing. So i hope the professional service won't cost me millions...

 

[fzabkar]

Clone the drive and then run data recovery software against the clone. As long as the drive has no physical issues, a professional recovery service is unlikely to achieve any better results than you.

Can you show us the Partitions window in DMDE? This should take less than 1 minute. Don't run the full scan.

https://dmde.com/

 

[TerryLaze]

The partition table is kept at the beginning of the disk, away from data, and a copy of it is kept at the end of the disk, also away from data.
So you can pretty safely mess with partition recovery software (disk un-erase) without having to fear for your data.

Testdisk is free and open source and well documented but pretty hard to use.
Minitools partition manager and easus partition recovery have nice easy to use interfaces where you can search and recover your partition table.