External Hard Drive Data Scambled

[bubblegum_bill]

My friend recently got a new computer, and bought an external hard drive to put his movies and games and stuff on to free space. He is a bit gung ho with computers and stupidly has never safely removed the thing when unplugging it. The other day I got a call from him saying his hard drive has a virus on it and his data is fully scrambled. I had a look, and neither his antivirus nor mine picked up anything, so virus is unlikely. I'm convinced it was from his improper use. Anyhow, I thought I'd try and get his stuff back. I ran chkdsk and it found multiple problems but spent the night correcting "chains". It just kept going with no signs of ending. After a thought I cancelled that as it seemed to be getting nowhere and tried Piriform Recuva. It found a bunch of files to recover but said they totalled over 10TB (when the external HDD capacity is only 1TB!). I tried recovering just one of the files it found, which still resulted in it being scrambled. I can't work out how to post a photo, but the folders are named with random symbols and some say they were last modified in the future or even before the drive was bought (some like in 2100!)

I'm minded to format it and start again, and he agrees as nothing hugely important is on there, but it'd be kind of admitting defeat, y'know?

Anyway, thought I'd ask if any of you guys have any ideas. Thanks in advance!

 

[James Mason]

It's dead.

Unless he has thousands of dollars worth of data on it, just format it and start again.

 

[bubblegum_bill]

You reckon? I mean I know that would be the simplest solution but I just don't like admitting defeat 😛

 

[James Mason]

You reckon? I mean I know that would be the simplest solution but I just don't like admitting defeat 😛

yes very, this is why it's so important to treat your drives nicely.

 

[bubblegum_bill]

Thanks, I think I will. He will have learned his lesson about safely removing and hopefully does it properly next time!

Thanks for your help

 

[RolandJS]

Some have had success with TestDisk's PhotoRec; however, that can run into hours and hours and hours of scanning -- perhaps it's time to format. I recommend the owner purchase another 2-3TB usb ext HD for backup of the OS partition and Data partition on a routine basis.

 

[bubblegum_bill]

Some have had success with TestDisk's PhotoRec; however, that can run into hours and hours and hours of scanning -- perhaps it's time to format. I recommend the owner purchase another 2-3TB usb ext HD for backup of the OS partition and Data partition on a routine basis.

Thanks for your reply, I formatted it anyway and it is now working beautifully. Weirdly it was formatted to FAT32 before I formatted it; needless to say it was put back to NTFS!
If I get another corrupted disk to fix I'll try PhotoRec, is it a paid for program?

 

[RolandJS]

TestDisk/PhotoRec - I know only about the free version, if you find out details about a pay-for version before I do, post the details, thanks!