Question One of my drives crashed. Can I recover any data? How to go about it?

[Ralston18]

@Beachhead1985

Regarding Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer: both tools are included with Windows.

Simply click the Windows icon and start typing the tool name.

Many third party tools use the same data that Windows will present.

Just dressed up a bit....

FYI:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

 

[Beachhead1985]

How long has this partition recovery been running?

I suspect that drive is too far gone to "recover".

Over a day, how long should it take?

 

[USAFRet]

Over a day, how long should it take?

Not that long.

And given the above report from HD Tune....it is not looking good.

 

[Beachhead1985]

@Beachhead1985

Regarding Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer: both tools are included with Windows.

Simply click the Windows icon and start typing the tool name.

Many third party tools use the same data that Windows will present.

Just dressed up a bit....

FYI:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

I've got it. It's a dog's breakfast. What am I looking for? There is a lot of different categories here in event viewer.

25Nov24 7:12PM SMART fault?

I noted the thing was acting weird and I was in the process of backing it up when it became *VERY* slow. So I gave it a restart, because my PC drops to dead slow when it wants to do an update it needs to restart for and I'm currently using it. Big mistake. Honestly, if I'd realized how critical the situation was then, I could easily have transferred the important files in a few minutes at 355kb/s which was what it was giving me. As it was, I was going through my folders alphabetically.

I copied my work folder first (name starts with A) and then the next folder was super-slow and here we are.

 

[Beachhead1985]

Not that long.

And given the above report from HD Tune....it is not looking good.

Okay, so I should give it up as a bad show?

Cancel partition wizard 12.whatever, try 9.0 on data recovery? Pay for PW12 pro and try that?

If this was running at a decent clip right now, I'd be happy. But my PC just won't run continuously for 100+ days (0% after 1+ days), even if that was worth my time. Sometime, while I'm sleeping it will restart for an update and I'll be back to square one.

 

[USAFRet]

Okay, so I should give it up as a bad show?

Cancel partition wizard 12.whatever, try 9.0 on data recovery? Pay for PW12 pro and try that?

If this was running at a decent clip right now, I'd be happy. But my PC just won't run continuously for 100+ days (0% after 1+ days), even if that was worth my time. Sometime, while I'm sleeping it will restart for an update and I'll be back to square one.

The drive is physically failing.

I doubt any consumer level fix, free or paid, will work.

 

[Ralston18]

Re: "25Nov24 7:12PM SMART fault?"

That is the point - you have to look.

What did you find in Event Viewer and where did you find it?

Path? Perhaps:

Event Viewer
>Applications and Services
>Microsoft
>Windows
>Disks

There are four disk "views" listed.

All those errors are probably the disk's dying gasps....

RIP.

 

[SkyNetRising]

https://imgur.com/Hyavgna

View: https://imgur.com/Hyavgna---Still
running the current version, just found a copy of 9.0 Should I stop this and restart the process with 9.0?

Did you choose quick scan or full scan?
Quick scan would be faster.

Scan process has located two partitions already - spanning entire disk.
GUID Partition Table information is located in first 34 LBA (LBA 0 - 33) and last 34 LBA on the drive.
It's enough to just read that area.

Press Cancel (near Scan progress),
then select all partitions to restore (two checkboxes) and
click finish.

If version 12 is not letting to restore lost partitions, then do the same thing with version 9.

That should allow assigning drive letter to lost partition and accessing data on it.
Access will still be slow because of damaged disk state.

 

[Beachhead1985]

Did you choose quick scan or full scan?
Quick scan would be faster.

Scan process has located two partitions already - spanning entire disk.
GUID Partition Table information is located in first 34 LBA (LBA 0 - 33) and last 34 LBA on the drive.
It's enough to just read that area.

Press Cancel (near Scan progress),
then select all partitions to restore (two checkboxes) and
click finish.

If version 12 is not letting to restore lost partitions, then do the same thing with version 9.

That should allow assigning drive letter to lost partition and accessing data on it.
Access will still be slow because of damaged disk state.

Okay, trying that with 9.0

This does seem faster already.

 

[Beachhead1985]

I swear I'm not doing this because I'm lonely. I also not as big a moron as this makes me sound.

So, yeah; 9.0 on quick scan works great. Was working great.

SO GREAT that I decided to try windows file recovery to get my excel sheets back.

Turns out those two programs do not like each other and everything but task manager froze up and task manager couldn't get anything to even close. So, I restarted it.

I let it roll on restart all night hoping it would sort itself out. No dice. shut it down around 7 this morning, trying to start it now and back to square one. I got to it showing me "preparing automatic repair" and now it's been black screen with cursor for a few hours.

I hoped this wouldn't happen after the autorepair cycle before, but it's also why I wanted to pull the drive to an external shell, because I figured it probably do this on every restart as long as it's in there.

Any ideas on bypassing it somehow?

Oh, and no; Windows File Recovery didn't get me anything.

Thanks for your time.

 

[fzabkar]

@Beachhead1985, your only realistic DIY data recovery path is to clone the drive with a tool that understands how to work with bad heads/media. Unfortunately, you have made the problem much worse by thrashing the drive with all manner of inappropriate tools. Data recovery professionals recommend HDDSuperClone or its fork, OpenSuperClone, or ddrescue. These are all open source.

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

HDDSuperClone/OpenSuperClone incorporate a firmware hack which deals with the "WD slow responding problem".

 

[Beachhead1985]

@Beachhead1985, your only realistic DIY data recovery path is to clone the drive with a tool that understands how to work with bad heads/media. Unfortunately, you have made the problem much worse by thrashing the drive with all manner of inappropriate tools. Data recovery professionals recommend HDDSuperClone or its fork, OpenSuperClone, or ddrescue. These are all open source.

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

HDDSuperClone/OpenSuperClone incorporate a firmware hack which deals with the "WD slow responding problem".

There is a known issue with WD drives responding slowly?

What makes the other tools inappropriate?

Do I understand this right that I need to download this other program with a Linux OS on another USB as a first step? I wouldn't want to just use a portable drive? This is a standalone tool?

This is better than Marium Reflect?

 

[USAFRet]

There is a known issue with WD drives responding slowly?

No.
There is nothing special or inadequate about WD drive in particular.

What makes the other tools inappropriate?

Windows tools tend to thrash the drive into instability. Other tools, like the ones mentioned, know how to treat a dying drive a bit better.

 

[Beachhead1985]

No.
There is nothing special or inadequate about WD drive in particular.

Windows tools tend to thrash the drive into instability. Other tools, like the ones mentioned, know how to treat a dying drive a bit better.

I didn't know that about windows tools.

I admit to being a bit confused here. So I should use this HDDSuperClone, OpenSuperClone, or ddrescue and not Marium Reflect then? A few people mentioned Marium Reflect earlier in the thread and I was going to try that next.

 

[USAFRet]

I didn't know that about windows tools.

I admit to being a bit confused here. So I should use this HDDSuperClone, OpenSuperClone, or ddrescue and not Marium Reflect then? A few people mentioned Marium Reflect earlier in the thread and I was going to try that next.

HDDSupuperClone or OpenSuperCLone.

However......
This WILL need to be recovered/cloned to a whole different drive.
And then, you work any recovery function on that cloned target drive.

 

[Beachhead1985]

HDDSupuperClone or OpenSuperCLone.

However......
This WILL need to be recovered/cloned to a whole different drive.
And then, you work any recovery function on that cloned target drive.

Okay, I got a new external drive instead of a second internal HDD, so I have that drive to use. I also have USBs I can use to put this Linux OS on in order to run the program.

I just need to know that I understanding the procedure right.

1. USB to install OS on.
2. External drive to clone to
3. Clone bad drive to external, attempt recovery from there. (Recovery Wizard 9.0?)

 

[USAFRet]

Okay, I got a new external drive instead of a second internal HDD, so I have that drive to use. I also have USBs I can use to put this Linux OS on in order to run the program.

I just need to know that I understanding the procedure right.

1. USB to install OS on.
2. External drive to clone to
3. Clone bad drive to external, attempt recovery from there. (Recovery Wizard 9.0?)

I will defer to the expert on those tools to guide you further.

 

[fzabkar]

There is a known issue with WD drives responding slowly?

What makes the other tools inappropriate?

Do I understand this right that I need to download this other program with a Linux OS on another USB as a first step? I wouldn't want to just use a portable drive? This is a standalone tool?

This is better than Marium Reflect?

The "WD slow responding problem" is a widely known issue in WD drives, and has been for two decades. Professional tools such as PC3000 (US$10K) can deal with this problem with a single click by hacking two firmware modules. HDDSuperClone incorporates the same firmware hack, AIUI. The root cause of the problem is that the drive bogs down during error recovery, so pro tools turn off this feature.

Any Windows based cloning tool is inappropriate because Windows interferes with error recovery. Linux tools can get much closer to the hardware. HDDSuperClone has a Live CD and bootable USB with a GUI.

The cardinal rule of data recovery is never to recover the same sector twice. If you can read it, save it to a healthy destination drive. Partition Wizard pointlessly scanned the entire drive and threw away every sector. During this time the drive would have been degrading. Instead, you should have been saving each sector to another drive. Had you done this, you would now have a 90% clone, or better, depending on the number of bad sectors.

BTW, the partition metadata are stored in sectors 0, 1 and 2, with copies at the end of the drive. A tool such as DMDE finds these metadata within seconds. It will only perform a full scan if the user specifically requests it. That's because the author has some background in data recovery and understands that sick drives must not be thrashed.

 

[Beachhead1985]

The "WD slow responding problem" is a widely known issue in WD drives, and has been for two decades. Professional tools such as PC3000 (US$10K) can deal with this problem with a single click by hacking two firmware modules. HDDSuperClone incorporates the same firmware hack, AIUI. The root cause of the problem is that the drive bogs down during error recovery, so pro tools turn off this feature.

Any Windows based cloning tool is inappropriate because Windows interferes with error recovery. Linux tools can get much closer to the hardware. HDDSuperClone has a Live CD and bootable USB with a GUI.

The cardinal rule of data recovery is never to recover the same sector twice. If you can read it, save it to a healthy destination drive. Partition Wizard pointlessly scanned the entire drive and threw away every sector. During this time the drive would have been degrading. Instead, you should have been saving each sector to another drive. Had you done this, you would now have a 90% clone, or better, depending on the number of bad sectors.

BTW, the partition metadata are stored in sectors 0, 1 and 2, with copies at the end of the drive. A tool such as DMDE finds these metadata within seconds. It will only perform a full scan if the user specifically requests it. That's because the author has some background in data recovery and understands that sick drives must not be thrashed.

Wow.

That comes as a shock to me. I've bought WD drives a few times now and always did my best to research them and until this year when I bought Toshiba, instead; I always read they were among the most reliable out there. Now of course, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that all producers have good and bad models. I'm not doubting you, just let down and surprised.

This totally explains the Linux-thing, as in why Linux? At this stage, I'd believe anything you told me about MS products up to and including them having features deliberately added to ruin my PC, progressively with every update.

A lot of new information here.

So, am I understanding the procedure from that reddit link, correctly then?

1. USB to install OS on.
2. External drive to clone to
3. Clone bad drive to external with this program and not marium reflect, attempt recovery from there. (Recovery Wizard 9.0?)

Thanks for your time. Had no clue about a lot of this.

 

[fzabkar]

Yes, that's the procedure. If the file system metadata survives the cloning, then you may not need a data recovery tool. Otherwise, here are the tools that data recovery professionals use:

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3208

Many are cheaper than the highly advertised second tier tools.

Whatever you do, don't allow CHKDSK to run. MS only cares about the integrity of the file system, and it will often sacrifice your data to this end. In fact it's probably safest to avoid mounting the clone drive for this reason, and rely on data recovery software instead.

BTW, all HDD brands become slow when they bog down during error recovery. It's not exclusively a WD issue.

 

[Beachhead1985]

Yes, that's the procedure. If the file system metadata survives the cloning, then you may not need a data recovery tool. Otherwise, here are the tools that data recovery professionals use:

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3208

Many are cheaper than the highly advertised second tier tools.

Whatever you do, don't allow CHKDSK to run. MS only cares about the integrity of the file system, and it will often sacrifice your data to this end.

BTW, all HDD brands become slow when they bog down during error recovery. It's not exclusively a WD issue.

Thank you, I'll give this a shot ASAP, but likely not tonight.