[SOLVED] HDD failing after hard shutdown

[arctal]

I had a windows update stuck on 0% for hours so decided to just hard shutdown my pc. After booting up again, windows ran a scan and repair on my second drive (not my windows drive). The repair was progressing extremely slow and the ETA was over a month so I rebooted and skipped scanning.

Boot time was much much slower than usual and after logging in I noticed windows file explorer was also much slower and would freeze very often making it basically impossible to use (Reminder: this drive is not where windows is installed).
Windows and BIOS still did recognize my HDD which gives me some hope, but I am unable to access any data on it. Other info like capacity and available capacity doesn't show up either. I also saw its activity was at 100% in task manager.

For now I am leaving it unplugged to prevent any further damage until I have a way to recover the files.

I am completely new to data recovery but I suspect bad sectors. I just wanted to get some opinions on what to do; if its worth risking attempting to recover it myself with something like ddrescue or if I should just send it to a professional service. There's about 2.5 TB of data on it and Im not too keen on loosing it since it has all my files from the last 8 or so years on it.

Thanks in advance for any advice, all help is much appreciated.

 

[velocityg4]

If it is important send it to a pro. As you can make it much worse trying to recover yourself. Send to a proper service which is well reviewed and equipped for data recovery. Not your neighborhood computer shop.

while any failed drive is connected. Windows and other OSes will generally have performance tank. I don’t know why. When the drive has no relevant boot data. All I can surmise is it’s because the OS is trying to talk to it.

 

[DSzymborski]

Unfortunately, the only dependable way to recover data is to not lose it in the first place. A backup solution for important files is a basic part of PC ownership, and sooner or later, negligence has consequences.

A data recovery lab is your best guarantee to recover data. If you want to try yourself first, you need to completely stop using this drive, remove it, and install Windows on another drive. Then connect the problematic drive as a secondary drive or in an external enclosure, and try to use software recovery such as EaseUS or Recuva to try and recover whatever you can.

If that doesn't work, then the only actual option is a professional firm. Be prepared though; these are not inexpensive.