external hard drive has raw and ntfs

[Bird186]

so I have several externals, the problem is with my Seagate freeagent 3 tb I took it out of its case because im an idiot. I also have a 1 tb (these are fairly old and 3.5) I took that one out of its case and connected my 2.5 500gb to it and it worked fantastic fixed that drive. so I think to myself hey I can connect my 3 terabyte to it and it will read it. well it didn't. I ordered a sata adapter from amazon and I connect it and it reads raw. I freak out get over it and boot up my r studio program and it reads one raw and one ntfs. everything in the ntfs is fine I see everything and the files are good. I have r-studio scan the raw file system and it is full of stuff I realize isn't in the ntfs. my question is how do I fix this problem. now before someone says just copy everything onto my other hd's I cant the 3 tb had like 40 gigs left and all my other drives are full as well I don't have cash to buy a new one otherwise I would. if that's the only option at some point I will get one but this one has my main stuff all my music videos and games. oh and before someone points out that Im an idiot for taking the 3tb out of its enclosure or asks why I say because the damn adaptors are terrible 3 broke on me so I said the hell with it and tried it with the 1tb connections and im here so please help me lol

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware, Bird186!

Well, since your external drive is recognized as RAW, it means that the file system got corrupted. You definitely need to find a way to copy all the data from that 3 TB external drive, otherwise, you'd lose it. Changing the file system back to NTFS would require you reformat the drive, which would erase everything that is on it.
I'd also advise you to try to access your files from the original enclosure, or you might not be able to recover the data. Most of the massive external drives (above 2 TB) are configured with different LBAs (4KB) which match the enclosure, rather than using the native 512e LBAs (internal SATA HDDs). This basically means that you'd need the original enclosure to access your current data.

I'd also highly recommend you to run your HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool, to check up on the health and SMART data of your drive. You should be able to find this utility on their website.

Good luck! Hope this helps.
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Bird186]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware, Bird186!

Well, since your external drive is recognized as RAW, it means that the file system got corrupted. You definitely need to find a way to copy all the data from that 3 TB external drive, otherwise, you'd lose it. Changing the file system back to NTFS would require you reformat the drive, which would erase everything that is on it.
I'd also advise you to try to access your files from the original enclosure, or you might not be able to recover the data. Most of the massive external drives (above 2 TB) are configured with different LBAs (4KB) which match the enclosure, rather than using the native 512e LBAs (internal SATA HDDs). This basically means that you'd need the original enclosure to access your current data.

I'd also highly recommend you to run your HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool, to check up on the health and SMART data of your drive. You should be able to find this utility on their website.

Good luck! Hope this helps.
SuperSoph_WD

i use r-studio which basically is a recovery program that scans the drive according to that (as far as the s.m.a.r.t. check goes) everything is green except Current pending sector count which is yellow ID is C5 and uncorrectable sector count which is also yellow and C6. as far as the RAW goes, r-studio read the ntfs partition just fine it says freeagent as the name and everything looks in order. when i plugged it into the 1 tb enclosure i think it spilt the drive into two partitions
the RAW 347gb and a 2.(something)tb

the program reads one partition correctly the problem is the raw part, that seems to be the part the computer reads. its not one giant raw partition i know what that looks like ive dealt with it before.

its a Seagate freeagent drive, basically its an enclosed drive and a plug in adapter ive gone through 3 im not buying another lol it isn't worth it. if i had just been patient i think this adapter would work fine the problem is the spilt partitions and raw being dominate and having stuff in it

idk if the above makes sense im sure i repeated myself and i don't mean to sound ungrateful im just terrible at explaining things via text thanks for your reply though super. dc fanboys unite lol

ps ive found a program called testdisk it seems to know theres 2 partitions one raw and one ntfs i think the problem is a messed up mbr and idk if teskdisk can fix that without erasing anything please advise. thanks again

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, Bird186!

Unfortunately, those SMART attributes are pretty important. If they are failing, it only means that things will get worse. I'd strongly recommend you to backup all your accessible data from the external ASAP and consider using professional data recovery services.
You can give the utility you mentioned above a try as well, but at your own risk.
Failing the current pending sector count indicates the amount of unstable, waiting to be remapped sectors on your external hard drive. The parameter could be predicting imminent drive failure. Moreover, the raw value of the Uncorrectable sector count indicates the number of uncorrectable errors when reading/writing a sector. Both parameters are critical, thus you need to back up all your data from the NTFS partition ASAP and consider using data recovery services if you need the files from the RAW partition as well.

Hope this was helpful. Best of luck & Happy Holidays!
SuperSoph_WD