- Jan 3, 2014
- 10
- 0
- 10,520
I have a Seagate 1TB external hard drive that I've owned for less than a year. Some of the data on it has been backed up to secondary sources and some hasn't, I was actually in the process of backing certain folders up onto a cloud drive.
Over the last couple of months I noticed that the drive would randomly stop being read by my computer, didn't think it was a huge deal so I unplugged it and plugged it back in (I know now I Should've done safely remove the hardware via windows but I was careless and I also figured since my pc wasn't reading it, it wouldn't be a huge deal.
A few days ago, I took my drive with me to a friends house, put it in a safe place in a padded bag, (had intentions of using it but didn't) and when I returned home and plugged it in my desktop, it says "H:\ is not accessible. The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable."
I've been researching how to repair the problem to get the external drive to work again, as well as how to recover my data for about 3 days straight now, and haven't been incredibly successful. It may be that I don't want to throw in the towel and accept that there's no fixing it, but I also feel like I don't know enough about this area of computers so I don't want to give up just yet. I'm well aware data recovery is a very complex subject, but I'm hoping someone may be able to offer advice that I haven't yet tried.
I ran a chkdsk r and f, and I get the error that the Master File Table can't be found. I'm not incredibly familiar with disk partitioning (although I did a lot of research on it this weekend), but I'm almost certain this drive wasnt partitioned at all, at least I never did a manual partition myself (I'm assuming the drive doesn't do it itself automatically?) ...Again it's an external hard drive, not an internal one that boots my computer.
I tried to do research on how to restore the master file table, hoping that would lead to a potential fix, but it gets really complicated at this point in regards to partitions and being able to find the MFT. I tried using test disk, and it couldn't recover the MFT either, ran Seatools, which came up as a Pass on one part of the drive and Fail on the other (I was so delirious, I don't know how I figured out to test both parts, but maybe those were the partitions?)... It wouldn't repair the drive, I ran every test possible. I didn't want to wipe the drive until I conclude there's no fixing it and do some data recovery.
I did run another partition software, thinking it would "fix" the partitions, but it wasn't successful, and I unfortunately don't even remember what software it was because I decided to do a system restore after that which un-installed the program. The system restore was clearly unsuccessful as well (I was thinking maybe the drive got a virus somehow).
Right now I'm running Partition Find and Mount Pro. I ran the intellectual scan and the normal scan and they both said no Visible Partitions found, no new partitions found, I am still in the process of running the full scan.
Am I on the right track? Can anyone offer me any advice on which way to take this? I will surely reformat the drive if I'm able to fix it, but I really still have some hope I'll find a solution to get my drive back how it was before ....it seems there are so many different routes to take ...some work for situations that don't work for others....
(also if anyone has any helpful resources that explain partitioning and mounting in detail I think it could be useful for me to understand. I have googled of course, but I haven't found anything that explains it extensively)
Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated in advance, this forum has been one of my favorite resources for computer repair!
Also, I'm running Windows 8...I tried it on another computer didn't work. I didn't drop my bag or drop the drive, don't see how I would do any physical damage but it was weird that after I took it out of my bag it didn't work. Again the HD was acting strange a couple months before as well. I should've looked into it then....
Over the last couple of months I noticed that the drive would randomly stop being read by my computer, didn't think it was a huge deal so I unplugged it and plugged it back in (I know now I Should've done safely remove the hardware via windows but I was careless and I also figured since my pc wasn't reading it, it wouldn't be a huge deal.
A few days ago, I took my drive with me to a friends house, put it in a safe place in a padded bag, (had intentions of using it but didn't) and when I returned home and plugged it in my desktop, it says "H:\ is not accessible. The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable."
I've been researching how to repair the problem to get the external drive to work again, as well as how to recover my data for about 3 days straight now, and haven't been incredibly successful. It may be that I don't want to throw in the towel and accept that there's no fixing it, but I also feel like I don't know enough about this area of computers so I don't want to give up just yet. I'm well aware data recovery is a very complex subject, but I'm hoping someone may be able to offer advice that I haven't yet tried.
I ran a chkdsk r and f, and I get the error that the Master File Table can't be found. I'm not incredibly familiar with disk partitioning (although I did a lot of research on it this weekend), but I'm almost certain this drive wasnt partitioned at all, at least I never did a manual partition myself (I'm assuming the drive doesn't do it itself automatically?) ...Again it's an external hard drive, not an internal one that boots my computer.
I tried to do research on how to restore the master file table, hoping that would lead to a potential fix, but it gets really complicated at this point in regards to partitions and being able to find the MFT. I tried using test disk, and it couldn't recover the MFT either, ran Seatools, which came up as a Pass on one part of the drive and Fail on the other (I was so delirious, I don't know how I figured out to test both parts, but maybe those were the partitions?)... It wouldn't repair the drive, I ran every test possible. I didn't want to wipe the drive until I conclude there's no fixing it and do some data recovery.
I did run another partition software, thinking it would "fix" the partitions, but it wasn't successful, and I unfortunately don't even remember what software it was because I decided to do a system restore after that which un-installed the program. The system restore was clearly unsuccessful as well (I was thinking maybe the drive got a virus somehow).
Right now I'm running Partition Find and Mount Pro. I ran the intellectual scan and the normal scan and they both said no Visible Partitions found, no new partitions found, I am still in the process of running the full scan.
Am I on the right track? Can anyone offer me any advice on which way to take this? I will surely reformat the drive if I'm able to fix it, but I really still have some hope I'll find a solution to get my drive back how it was before ....it seems there are so many different routes to take ...some work for situations that don't work for others....
(also if anyone has any helpful resources that explain partitioning and mounting in detail I think it could be useful for me to understand. I have googled of course, but I haven't found anything that explains it extensively)
Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated in advance, this forum has been one of my favorite resources for computer repair!
Also, I'm running Windows 8...I tried it on another computer didn't work. I didn't drop my bag or drop the drive, don't see how I would do any physical damage but it was weird that after I took it out of my bag it didn't work. Again the HD was acting strange a couple months before as well. I should've looked into it then....
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