Need advice on how to repair MBR and Backup MBR on external drive.

[Telknor]

This is an update on the external USB 3 Seagate Backup Plus 2TB drive that I posted about three to four months ago but can not find the post to. That drive is now able to be read on a good day and data pulled off one file at a time. After having the drive examined it has been determined that the MBR and Backup MBR of the drive are corrupted in some manner and not showing the same data. Windows attempted an auto recovery and repair to the file system. Something that it had not done before in time window of the first post here. The 2TB drive had about 20GB of free space. In the space of two weeks pulling files one at a time when the drive can be seen by the OS I have managed to recover manually 6GB of data. However none of this data is the needed data. I have noticed that when I attempt to even look in the area of the drive that contains the needed data the drive just shuts down. Windows wont see drive until it is unplugged both USB and power wise for 30-60 seconds. Then its back to playing the old game of hit and miss described in the first post with the out come being the all too familiar "Drive needs to be formatted before Windows can use it". At one point I just gave up and told it to just go ahead and format the drive to which I got the response "This is not a Windows compatible Device"

I have pasted the first post below so people can read it. I have gotten to the point of just about throwing this drive into the incinerator as it's not even worthy of being a doorstop at this point.

J.L.Allen

1st post
External USB 3 Drive not working after a move.

I have an external USB 3 Seagate Backup Plus 2TB that worked fine up till about two weeks prior to moving across four states. During this two week period the drive would drop off of and return to the My Computer screen at random.

Was too busy preparing for the move and didn't have time to deal with the issue then so I simply shut the drive down and removed it from the system. Nothing on it was needed at the time.

After the move it was about two months before I was even able to set the system up and boot it up for a check. The computer is fine after the move and the other External a USB3 Seagate GoFlex 2TB powered up with no issues.

The Backup Plus is hit and miss.

One outta ten boots of main system and it might show up in My Computer. When it did show up it was like Russian roulette with the files being accessible or not. I use 'accessible' lightly as the file folders and directories can be gone through but any files in the folders if clicked on caused complete system hangup until reboot.

There are also times when instead of allowing access to file folders it just says the drive needs to be formatted or that it is not a usable Windows device.

Contacted Seagate on the matter and their advice was to transfer the Hard Drive from the unit into another external enclosure as the problem to them was the USB controller that serves as the base for the enclosure might of gone bad. This did not solve the issue.

My next step was to mount the drive internally and plug it directly into the Mother board as a slave drive. Computer sees it in Bios and in recovery software but Windows will not see it. Also slows system to a crawl when the drive is plugged in this way. When drive is in the enclosure system runs at normal speed even when it can 'see' the drive.

There have been no attempts to write data to this drive. I have only viewed the file structure when I can and tried to recover the files over to another drive with multiple forms of recovery software. All have failed stating that the drive is ether:

A: Not formatted.
B: Data is corrupted.
C: Data is physically not there at specified addresses given.
D: Drive is not a Windows compatible device.

This drive contains some critical work files and needs to be recovered.

System specs are as follows.

Mother Board
MSI 785GM-E51
Processor
QuadCore AMD Phenom II X4 945 3GHz
Memory
8 GB (4 x Kingston 2GB DDR3 1333 )
Video
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 with 2 GB DDR5
Main Hard Drive Internal
SeaGate 1TB (ST31000528AS)
Second Hard Drive Internal
SeaGate 4TB (ST4000DM000-1F2168)
Third Hard Drive External
SeaGate 2TB GoFlex
Forth Hard Drive External
SeaGate 2TB Backup Plus
OS
Windows 7 Professional 64Bit with Service pack 1
DirectX
11

If you know how to fix this Thank you in advance for any info you give. The people at SeaGate Thought the USB controller board in base of enclosure had failed or the MBR for drive was corrupt in some way.

The drive does not make any of the Classic failing drive noises This drive has not been dropped or had any liquid of any kind on it. If anything I expected the GoFlex drive to fail as it has been dropped / knocked to the floor many times over the last year by a cat. Cat even knocked it off a shelf into a fish tank. Drive still runs strong with no issues.

Thank you for your time,
J.L.Allen

 

[drtweak]

Hmmm i feel like i remember replying to something similar to you but not sure lol.

Well sounds like you def got a serious issue on your hand there, and i would have agreed with seagate on the initial solution there but as you have said that hasn't worked.

Now next question is I see you have quite a few drives. On your 4TB drive do you have more than 2TB free on it or no and if you don't can you free up space? IF you can get the drive to be seen by Windows you can use Data Rescue DD to make a image of the drive. it copies the drive Bit by Bit even if there is no data. Now here is the GREAT thing about this drive. When the drive drops, Data Rescue DD make a note of the drive failing, and it can't read it, and the data it has recovered will still be there but it will be one image. I THEN tell you what sector it left off, so the next time the drive is seen you can Start the drive at that sector and keep going on. It will then start a new image which you can later on then piece together.

NOW the great this about Data Rescue DD is you can read the drive from the Back to the front. This has been proven much more effect. Why? The read ahead feature on the hard drive can't read ahead because you are reading everything backwards. Now why is does this make is better? Because sometimes in failing drive reading ahead is what is causing the drive to fail or drop etc.

Then once you have all your images, you can put them together to make one big one, then there is software you can use to mount that image, and then do a data recovery off of that image.

either way you say it is a MBR issue which is is not. People get MBR and MFT mixed up alot. MBR is Master Boot Record. MFT is Master File Table, but yes your MFT is corrupt BUT it is most likely because the hard drive is failing.

And this is why I stay away from seagates...Unless it is their entrerpise SAS Drives. Otherwise I always stick to WD except for my 4TB backup drive because a 4TB WD at the time costed twice as much. besides it is 2 years old already and only has about 200-300 power on hours since it is only one to do backups and all it does is copy over what is new which usually isn't very much and they are usually movies/tv shows so they are big files that write fast.


DataRescue DD

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/drdd.htm

 

[Telknor]

I will give Data Rescue a try this weekend as it is not in my group of recovery software. This group includes the Seagate DiscWizard utility that came with the 4TB drive. I do have more than enough space on that drive and already tried to do a drive Mirror of bad drive to it. Their utility failed at same point as all the other recovery programs. Gets to the files I need at which point the drive Herp-Derps and Powers down. The reason I stated the MBR and Backup MBR were bad is that one of my programs has pointed out they are not showing the same data and size. The guy I took the drive to also stated this when both programs he used to analysis the drive popped up warnings to this effect. The only time I got anything about File Table was when windows tried to auto fix the drive. It got farther that anything else at 87% then drive just powered off.

My pref on drives is WD but at time of system rebuild SG drives fit the budget and were readily on hand at my supplier.

J.L.Allen

 

[drtweak]

Yea unless it has any kind of Boot Info on it there shouldn't be a MBR on there. It is when the MFT goes bad that you get data corruption but to me this sounds more like Hardware Failure than some kind of software/data corruption to me.

But try that out. Plug it in, run the program, make sure you click on the left arrow so it starts from the back to the front, and then when it tops or the program freezes see the sector where it stopped at then on the next run either try to start there or the sector after it.

Also can't remember if you said it or not but did you check the smart status of the hard drive? If you haven't download the Crystal Disk Info in my signature and run it while the hard drive it attached (That is if it will run if the hard drive is connected) I know some bad drives the program won't pick up or it won't run till the drive is removed.