Question Need help with recovering files from a drive full of bad sectors.

[Hyder118]

My 2TB Seagate External HDD had stopped responding after a power outage around a year ago and was showing up as RAW for quite a while until today when I plugged it back to check for possible solutions and the drive appears in the file manager and disk management. It has bad sectors though and I am not able to copy my data onto a different drive. The drive has some important data so I'd like to recover it. This is what crystal disk info says:

https://imgur.com/a/5o9w7yz

View: https://imgur.com/a/5o9w7yz

I would be most appreciative of any help! Please ask if any more information is needed. Thank you!

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

there is data recovery software available
and there are certain repair shops that will claim they can recover data.

whether this data will be "usable" depends on the state of it after recovery and usually can not be determined until after.

while software may be somewhat affordable, paying a company to do it is usually rather expensive.

 

[SkyNetRising]

The drive has some important data so I'd like to recover it.
I would be most appreciative of any help! Please ask if any more information is needed. Thank you!

Create drive image.
You can use R-Drive image software for this. It allows skipping bad blocks.
Then mount created image and try to recover data from it.

 

[Hyder118]

Create drive image.
You can use R-Drive image software for this. It allows skipping bad blocks.
Then mount created image and try to recover data from it.

Sorry but what do you mean by skipping bad blocks? Does it mean that the bad sectors will be ignored and only the readable data will be recovered?
I want to recover stuff from the bad sectors too. Images and videos to be exact.

 

[USAFRet]

The drive has some important data

This is specifically what a good backup routine is for.

Might be too late for this drive and its data, but something to think about for next time.

I want to recover stuff from the bad sectors too.

That may be impossible.

Stop messing with this dying drive. The only thing you want to do right now is create a full copy/clone.
Then, try data recovery with that.

The more you mess with this drive, the closer it is to total fail.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

I want to recover stuff from the bad sectors too

likely not possible.

 

[Hyder118]

This is specifically what a good backup routine is for.

Might be too late for this drive and its data, but something to think about for next time.


That may be impossible.

Stop messing with this dying drive. The only thing you want to do right now is create a full copy/clone.
Then, try data recovery with that.

The more you mess with this drive, the closer it is to total fail.

Okay I'll get myself a 2TB HDD to clone this disk to. I need a fool proof recovery plan and a rundown to begin with. Don't want to make mistakes.

 

[USAFRet]

Okay I'll get myself a 2TB HDD to clone this disk to. I need a fool proof recovery plan and a rundown to begin with. Don't want to make mistakes.

With a dying drive, nothing is foolproof.

As mentioned above, R-Drive Image may work to get some sort of image off to another drive.

And after that, you may need yet another drive to actually 'recover' files to.

Copy to this new 2TB with R-Drive.
Then, 'recover' to another drive.

 

[fzabkar]

Windows cloning tools must not be used with this drive. That's because Windows interferes with error recovery. You need a cloning tool that understands how to work with bad sectors.

https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/hddsuperclone_guide/

HDDSuperClone's author has provided a GUI and Live CD. His project has now forked into OpenSuperClone.