[SOLVED] Hard Drive Issues.

insinuendo

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May 15, 2016
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My two and a half-year-old 3TB hard drive was not showing up in Windows Explorer. I went into Disk Management and it asked me to initialize it. The process wiped about 2.7TB of stuff. Only about half of which I managed to recover. I put the recovered files back onto the drive and now after about 10 days after the incident in which I lost almost everything on the drive it is not showing up again and asking me to initialize it in the Disk Management section again.

I have taken the drive out and checked all the cable and it seems fine. When I load certain programs I hear a clicking noise. Which is strange because I don't install programs on this drive as it's only for media. I imagine that an SSD wouldn't make any sounds of course.

Do I need a new one? I don't feel comfortable using it any more as it feels like a liability.

Processor AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 6-Core Processor 3.80 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB
GPU RTX 2070 Super FE
Motherboard AsRock 570x TaiChi
 
Solution
The partition table in sector 0 has been cleared. The MBR code has been replaced with 64 bytes of strange rubbish which I have seen in cases similar to yours.

I would toggle MBR On/Off and reexamine this sector. If you see data at offsets 0x1C0 - 0x1FF, then you are good to go.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
It is dying.

2.5 years old...still under warranty?
Replace it.

And start a good backup routine.
Drives die. All of them, eventually. Some sooner than others.

A dead drive should never be more than "oh bother, I need a new drive."
It should never involve loss of data.
(especially twice on the same drive)
 
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Your system may have a gremlin which appears to affect Win 10 / AMD Ryzen platforms.

Can you show us the Partitions window in DMDE immediately after this problem occurs? The fix involves a few clicks and a few minutes, but it doesn't address the root cause. There is no need to reinitialise your drive.

BTW, which data recovery software did you use?
 
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insinuendo

Reputable
May 15, 2016
58
3
4,535
It is dying.

2.5 years old...still under warranty?
Replace it.

And start a good backup routine.
Drives die. All of them, eventually. Some sooner than others.

A dead drive should never be more than "oh bother, I need a new drive."
It should never involve loss of data.
(especially twice on the same drive)

It's no longer under warranty, unfortunately. I have just installed BackBlaze to avoid this situation again. Thanks for the help.
 

insinuendo

Reputable
May 15, 2016
58
3
4,535
Your system may have a gremlin which appears to affect Win 10 / AMD Ryzen platforms.

Can you show us the Partitions window in DMDE immediately after this problem occurs? The fix involves a few clicks and a few minutes, but it doesn't address the root cause. There is no need to reinitialise your drive.

BTW, which data recovery software did you use?

Here is the Disk Management window as it appears now. I used EaseUS to recovery the drive.

UhoPiKp.png
 
Yes, that's it. However, everything looks OK. Did you reinitialise and reformat after the most recent episode?

The "Media Dive" partition appears to be your old data. It's boot sector has been overwritten, but the $MFT appears to be intact. If you d-click the old partition, you should see your old files. However, many of them will have been overwritten by the latest reformat.
 

insinuendo

Reputable
May 15, 2016
58
3
4,535
Yes, that's it. However, everything looks OK. Did you reinitialise and reformat after the most recent episode?

The "Media Dive" partition appears to be your old data. It's boot sector has been overwritten, but the $MFT appears to be intact. If you d-click the old partition, you should see your old files. However, many of them will have been overwritten by the latest reformat.

No, I haven't done anything to it since it's the latest episode. What do you think is wrong? Do you think I should get a new drive?
 
Position the cursor over "Disk 0 ..." and select it. You should now see a "GPT On" button at the lower left corner. If so, then click it. You show now see a "T" in the Indicators column on the first line.

Select Disk -> Apply Changes and reboot to allow Windows to reexamine the drive.
 

insinuendo

Reputable
May 15, 2016
58
3
4,535
Position the cursor over "Disk 0 ..." and select it. You should now see a "GPT On" button at the lower left corner. If so, then click it. You show now see a "T" in the Indicators column on the first line.

Select Disk -> Apply Changes and reboot to allow Windows to reexamine the drive.

It says "MBR On/Off" instead of "GPT On".
 
The partition table in sector 0 has been cleared. The MBR code has been replaced with 64 bytes of strange rubbish which I have seen in cases similar to yours.

I would toggle MBR On/Off and reexamine this sector. If you see data at offsets 0x1C0 - 0x1FF, then you are good to go.
 
Solution