HDD randomly became RAW?

[disruptivefart]

My internal HDD has been working fine for quite a while now, and just today when i started up my PC it was listed in the My computer section, but when I opened it is showed no files, but said it still had like 42GB of 931GB, indicating the files were still there...

So I turned off my PC, unplugged the power cable and held down the power button for 15 secs and then I changed the SATA port to where that HDD connects to. I then booted up my PC and the files were all there! But, for some reason when i tried to open anything it said that windows cannot locate the file...

I did chkdsk /r on the drive and it showed as RAW. I searched around and found a program called testdisk but when I try to analyse the disk through that program it sais Partition: Read error.

Just to clarify: I am running windows 10 on a 64bit operation system. I owned the HDD for around 2 years now and have had problems similar to this is the past, but it always just resolved itself. But now its just not working. Can anyone help please!

Thanks in advance.

 

[JaredDM]

First off, never run chkdsk on any drive containing data which isn't backed up. Chkdsk is notorious for making data recovery situations ten times worse than they were at first.

I'm afraid there's no magic solution in your case. A hard drive randomly showing as RAW is a sign of hardware failure 99% of the time. The fact that testdisk can't scan it only confirms that.

If you have a backup, just toss the drive, buy a new one, and restore. If you don't have a backup, and the data is important, you might consider professional recovery. If it has no financial value but you'd like to attempt DIY for some "nice to have back" data you can afford to lose, PM me and perhaps I can offer some specific advice.

 

[disruptivefart]

First off, never run chkdsk on any drive containing data which isn't backed up. Chkdsk is notorious for making data recovery situations ten times worse than they were at first.

I'm afraid there's no magic solution in your case. A hard drive randomly showing as RAW is a sign of hardware failure 99% of the time. The fact that testdisk can't scan it only confirms that.

If you have a backup, just toss the drive, buy a new one, and restore. If you don't have a backup, and the data is important, you might consider professional recovery. If it has no financial value but you'd like to attempt DIY for some "nice to have back" data you can afford to lose, PM me and perhaps I can offer some specific advice.

When I changed the SATA port, I didnt really pay attention to which one it was, but I changed it back to whatever one it was previously in and now everything is working... chkdsk /r now shows it as a NTFS drive and no errors so far. I am confused :/ But I have had similar problems with this drive in the past.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

The likeliest causes would be the drive going bad, OS corruption (including infection), or the SATA controller. Regardless, the first thing you should do is make sure your backups are current and intact should the drive fail. You can try downloading Seatools (Seagate) or Data Lifeguard Diagnostics (Western Digital) and running a SMART check and so forth, and a viruscan and system file check on Windows, but if it were me I'd have a hard time ever trusting that drive again.