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

Jun 17, 2022
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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.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Won't help with this drive and data, but for future reference:
 
Jun 17, 2022
2
0
10
Won't help with this drive and data, but for future reference:
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...
 
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.