how to recover data from RAW drive?

[userbadshah]

with my 500GB HDD plugged in the pc power went accidentally, then i started having problems with torrents which cant resume now as the sectors are not accessible.

tried to back up 500GB data but it cant read from HDD after 20mins of use. Did chkdsk which didnt look its going to complete within a days. so unplugged it..then i was getting format it option.. booted livecd of ubuntu which said I/O error, inconsistent NTFS.

Drive is new, so tried to recover data but none of the programs seems to read it, i cant even see the contents. testdisk isnt helping either. what i dont get it is i used HDD for 10days after the incident till the time it asked me to format it. Can a bad sector create hardware problem?

the drive looks full of bad sectors and data recovery softwares cant read it as I/O error is displayed. should i format it and use data recovery for deleted photos and videos?

 

[lonewolf7]

First check the health status of drive : http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

And I think the OS is simply not reading the drive, so you are getting the format message. It will be hard to get data back if you format it, so don't try it for now.

 

[userbadshah]

First check the health status of drive : http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

ok thanks will do. and not only windows but ubuntu also cant access the drive. In the meantime i came across remo recover after some utilities failed to extract data like HDD regenerator(doesnt show my HDD), EASUS tools.

Remo scanned the drive in 5hours. then on next step its scanning my selected data type in found partition. I will wait till that completes..although i think it will also take hours. its 5am so i am gonna leave it like this.

 

[userbadshah]

did that check which said. bad health.
here is the screenshot.

URL http://tinypic.com/r/10zznn9/5

remo recover showing crossed files. should i just format it and prevent any damage? then use those softwares to recover data after format?

 

[lonewolf7]

Ok, the status of the drive clearly states its a bad drive. The damage is done, so there is nothing left to prevent. Donot format it now, it could be worse.

If the data is important to you, and you are desperate to get it back, then first try to replace the USB cable of the drive, see if anything changes, if not then try to open or break the caddy/case of the drive, and mount it directly to the MB of a desktop system as a second drive(not as boot drive)to recover data.

This method helps sometimes, but keep in mind, the warranty will be void if you open the case. Good luck.

 

[userbadshah]

Ok, the status of the drive clearly states its a bad drive. The damage is done, so there is nothing left to prevent. Donot format it now, it could be worse.

thanks for clearing that.. none of the common recovery tools did anything( some cant access the drive, if some do then they cannot find the partition).
i backed up the important data once the drive started to ask to scan it. although its 500GB drive 90% full. i had many videos and movies on it. would be nice to recover it even if the names are gone. i can spend few days on it if i can get them back.. any scanning on drive seems to damage it more.

the drive takes a long time to appear, i also think cable might be faulty but its a new and very think cable(double of what you get from seagate.) and none of my frnds have this micro B cable so i will need to buy one for 5$ to test my drive..

If i quick format it.. do you think common recovery tools will be able to find data or parts of data? considering cable is fine(2days ago i was getting 50mb/s from it while backing up) then i deleted some files which were corrupt and they went to recycle bin..next thing i know is i am asking for help.

 

[lonewolf7]

Basically every recovery tool needs the drive to be recognized by OS to recover data, and the drive to be appear in BIOS. I think the USB section of the drive has gone bad. And maybe the cable is fine.

And to answer your question : If the USB section has gone bad then it will be difficult to format the drive and then to recover data from the drive, cause the OS is not reading the drive properly. As I said earlier it will be hard to do anything with a drive that is not properly recognized by OS.

So your best bet is to open the caddy and to plug the drive in desktop to do something, cause this will bypass the USB section of the drive. I have seen it numerous times that the drive was fine but the USB has gone bad. So if you wish, give it a try, you have nothing to loose at this moment.

 

[userbadshah]

As I said earlier it will be hard to do anything with a drive that is not properly recognized by OS.
So your best bet is to open the caddy and to plug the drive in desktop to do something, cause this will bypass the USB section of the drive.

I wanted to use your method but then transcend wont RMA the drive. its 7 months old. its military grade drop free shit as claimed by them, but here its giving issues in normal usage. Anyway i could try to clone it with dd but then you need 500GB free space plus if its so bad as remo recover showed files "x" marked, i dont think even thats gonna help. As usual in start everybody wants the data but after few days of discussions they get prepared to accept that its gone. alteast most of us do.

So i will just play with the drive with icare tool after buying a new usb cord so if the cable is faulty which i doubt then i will be lucky to get some data otherwise i will just format it and see if any of these pro tools can recover anything.

thanks alot for all the help and my last question.. i have seen some drive responding very slowly becoz of fragmentation, you think that could be a cause its acting slow? i dont think so either but just asking.

 

[lonewolf7]

Its not true in your case. The other day you were getting 50mbps speed, so I think it has nothing to do with fragmentation. Anyways I wish you good luck for anything to everything you do with the drive. Cheers.

 

[Christopher Nemo]

I RECOVERED MY LOST PARTITION, 200GB of precious data 100%!

I DID IT!!!!! Once again, I righteously proclaim that I am a genius! I went into a maze of darkness and got lost a little bit with all kinds of trials. I used all these junks that didn't work and wasted my time: http://www.puransoftware.com's Data Recovery, Recuva.com, and http://www.cgsecurity.org's TestDisk. They all lied and claimed that their programs could recover partitions. All the exhausting time consuming scans, with at least 3 data movements to experiments in other disks took me almost 20 hrs of active times and many more hours of automated computer working by itself. Nothing was good. I found all kinds of junk files in my backup discs dating back to as far as 1993 in those experimental scans. Those junk files will drown you and waste your time. Don't waste your time with almost 2 million files! They are very interesting though. Those are other people files on these HDDs I bought. I should now offer professional data recovery services for both files and partition. I almost spend $30 or more to these tempting services myself and wasted more time and money.

So how did I do it. Simple! Using EaseUs. The partition that went crazy and became "unallocated," I tried to reassign to Windows 7 with NTSF. It was asking me to format in order to access it and I got scared and stopped there. So I just cloned that UNFORMATED RAW inaccessible disc to other disc and experimented with the recovery activities. I formatted with QUICK FORMAT via Windows 7 at the cloned disc and as I expected, the partition was lost. However, it taught me something and gave me an idea. I created some test directories and copied some files and DELETED + UNALLOCATED the whole partition in the cloned HDD drive.

1. I restarted my Windows and start EaseUS.
2. Highlighted on that DELETED + UNALLOCATED part on that HDD.
3. On top EaseUS showed an icon "Partition Recovery"
4. Clicked on that and CHECKED the disc showed in the list
5. EaseUS gave me two options: "Fast" or "Complete" to check in its Partition Recovery Wizard.
6. It went to work for about 15 mins or more, depending on the size of your HDD or partition size and it automatically formatted NTSF Primary, Logical or whatever it was before and I found everything back just as before!
7. Now I simulated the real RAW INACCESSIBLE HDD that requiring me to format.
8. I DELETED and UNASSIGNED the whole HDD and restarted Windows.
9. Started EaseUS and highlighted the HDD and did the step 2 to 6 above! I got it all back!

If anyone needs professional data recovery, partition recovery, and file recovery, I can do it for you for fair fee.