Question HardDrive crashed yesterday - How bad is it? What can I do to save data?

Sep 17, 2021
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Hi, one of my internal hard drives has been crashing a lot lately, I didn't know what to do about it or what kind of damage could be caused, so I just kept on using it regardless of the irregular freezes and crashes. I should have seen the warning signs and backed it up weeks ago, but stupid me didn't realize how serious it actually was. Yesterday it decided to kick the bucket it seems like. It went from functional to almost dead. I've been trying to do a complete chkdsk scan, but it got stuck on stage 4, and would have taken many days to complete, so I stopped it. Then I tried to do a chkdsk /f instead of /r, and it managed to do it fully, but there's no difference to the drive.

I downloaded HD Tune Pro to do a scan and check the health and it looks really bad. It's transfer rate has dropped down to 0.0-0.9, which is why trying to back up data is going really slowly as well it seems (around 1mb transfer rate). See attached images:
View: https://imgur.com/Nb8ZAlw

View: https://imgur.com/KgA886H


If I've understood correctly, the "reallocated sector count" is really bad.

My questions now are:
Is there anything I can do to improve its health enough to back up data faster? How do I salvage as much as possible given the slow transfer rate? would a complete chkdsk /r do anything?

I'm currently trying to go for the most personal and vital data, but it's probably gonna take days to transfer at this rate. I have also looked into a cloud based solution such as Backblaze, but will that work given the slow transfer rate?



I have some important data on it that I should have backed up ages ago. We live and we learn I guess.. first time this happens to me. I hope anyone can offer advice.
 
Sep 17, 2021
2
0
10
That was when you should have started a backup routine.

Do NOT mess with it in an attempt to make this go faster.
Get what you can, at whatever slow thing it is doing.

Thanks. I feared that was the case. I'll try to backup what I can and take it in small increments, praying it lasts enough for that.