recover data from external hard drive

[jsmithborne]

I have a 1 TB WD Passport USB external drive that I dropped. I've spent 3 days now searching forums and trying different data recovery applications in an attempt to recover my photos and music. When I plug it into my Win7 laptop, it shows up in Device Manager but is not automatically mapped; Disk Management identifies it as having a RAW File System. Windows diagnostics say it is "Healthy" and "working properly" but it also can't read it (I've tried a couple of things through Windows, including running chkdsk from an elevated command prompt). I've also looked at the drive on a machine running Ubuntu--no joy--and a Mac--also no joy. Both seemed to see the drive, but didn't recognize it or didn't see any data on it.

None of the disk recovery packages I've tried has been able to do anything with it--some of them don't see it, as a partition but not a drive, some see it but can't touch it. Testdisk came closest--it seemed like it was looking at the disk, but it just said "Read error at..." as it counted through the sectors. I stopped it before it got too far along.

I haven't been able to attach the drive directly to a computer--I don't see any ports on the drive that match up to any of the cables in the machines.

So 2 things I'm considering before I have to face the decision about dropping a grand to get it recovered professionally--I read in one forum a recommendation to format a hard drive, then use a data recovery program that is designed to recover data from a formatted drive. That kind of seems logical, but also very scary. There is also a program called SpinRite that seems to work at a deeper level than the other programs and runs on FreeDOS, but it looks like I'd have to find special DOS USB drivers if I can't figure out how to plug the drive directly into the computer.

Any thoughts or recommendations at this point would be extremely welcome.

 

[corroded]

This is one of the "portable" WD's correct. Unfortunately, the way they make those defeats the normal "recovery" that I do. Most older "portable" drives use an adapter to mate the USB circuitry to the HDD. The new ones have the USB3.0 circuit board directly attached to the HDD without any secondary interface and that board is what normally fails and corrupts the drive.

However... If windows does "see" it in any way, GetBackData for NTFS is what I use to recover from drives (formatted or failing) Good Luck

GetBackData site: https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm

Also, I am a partner with DriveSavers and get a discount, if you want to go that way...

 

[TyrOd]

This is one of the "portable" WD's correct. Unfortunately, the way they make those defeats the normal "recovery" that I do. Most older "portable" drives use an adapter to mate the USB circuitry to the HDD. The new ones have the USB3.0 circuit board directly attached to the HDD without any secondary interface and that board is what normally fails and corrupts the drive.

However... If windows does "see" it in any way, GetBackData for NTFS is what I use to recover from drives (formatted or failing) Good Luck

GetBackData site: https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm

Also, I am a partner with DriveSavers and get a discount, if you want to go that way...

No the logic board is not what "normally" fails. Bridge boards fail pretty often but that has nothing to do with read errors. It's just what amateurs can handle because they don't know how to diagnose failing heads.

If the drive is spinning up and experiencing read errors, there's nothing any software including GetDataBack can do because the heads are likely failing.

The people who gave you advice to reformat the drive are complete fools, because all that will do is eliminate/corrupt the MFT's(file system) information and make recovering data with file/folder structure in tact that much more difficult.

At the very least you'll needs someone who can image the drive and read those bad sectors while minimizing stress with specialized data recovery hardware/software and they may need to replace the head rack assembly in a clean room to do this.
There is a small ~5% chance that it's a problem with the PCB, which can also easily be dealt with by a professional lab regardless of the USB interface.

Unfortunately Drivesavers uses standard commercial hardware(PC-3000) and is way overpriced even though the have the same tools in house as 100 other labs. Even with a discount, they are one of the most expensive labs out here and they don't even bother doing clean room recoveries for individual clients in most cases, and never deal with drives that have media damage.

My advice would be to go to the WD website and go through the premier partners until you find one that you're satisfied with.
You're well beyond software recovery at this point and any further attempts are only going to cause more stress to the drive and potential unrecoverable media damage.

 

[trekzone]

Try WeRecoverData.com as they may have some low-cost approach on how to recover those files safely and efficiently. Thus if they'll find it that a more advance sophisticated technique is needed to do the job that is where you will be prepared for the cost of a successful recovery.

 

[jsmithborne]

Thanks; I especially appreciate the information about the reformatting. That wasn't advice someone specifically gave me, just a recommendation I found on a forum for someone else with a similar problem. There was a data recovery company listed on the WD pages that was also recommended by a local computer repair place, so I've contacted them for a quote. Seems like it might not end up being as expensive as I'd feared. Going to be about the same as what I paid the vet when my dog got sick. That didn't end up working out very well--hopefully this will go much better.

This is one of the "portable" WD's correct. Unfortunately, the way they make those defeats the normal "recovery" that I do. Most older "portable" drives use an adapter to mate the USB circuitry to the HDD. The new ones have the USB3.0 circuit board directly attached to the HDD without any secondary interface and that board is what normally fails and corrupts the drive.

However... If windows does "see" it in any way, GetBackData for NTFS is what I use to recover from drives (formatted or failing) Good Luck

GetBackData site: https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm

Also, I am a partner with DriveSavers and get a discount, if you want to go that way...

No the logic board is not what "normally" fails. Bridge boards fail pretty often but that has nothing to do with read errors. It's just what amateurs can handle because they don't know how to diagnose failing heads.

If the drive is spinning up and experiencing read errors, there's nothing any software including GetDataBack can do because the heads are likely failing.

The people who gave you advice to reformat the drive are complete fools, because all that will do is eliminate/corrupt the MFT's(file system) information and make recovering data with file/folder structure in tact that much more difficult.

At the very least you'll needs someone who can image the drive and read those bad sectors while minimizing stress with specialized data recovery hardware/software and they may need to replace the head rack assembly in a clean room to do this.
There is a small ~5% chance that it's a problem with the PCB, which can also easily be dealt with by a professional lab regardless of the USB interface.

Unfortunately Drivesavers uses standard commercial hardware(PC-3000) and is way overpriced even though the have the same tools in house as 100 other labs. Even with a discount, they are one of the most expensive labs out here and they don't even bother doing clean room recoveries for individual clients in most cases, and never deal with drives that have media damage.

My advice would be to go to the WD website and go through the premier partners until you find one that you're satisfied with.
You're well beyond software recovery at this point and any further attempts are only going to cause more stress to the drive and potential unrecoverable media damage.

 

[jsmithborne]

Thanks--I'm requesting a quote from WeRecoverData.com, to see how it compares to the one I got from Gillware.

Try WeRecoverData.com as they may have some low-cost approach on how to recover those files safely and efficiently. Thus if they'll find it that a more advance sophisticated technique is needed to do the job that is where you will be prepared for the cost of a successful recovery.

 

[jsmithborne]

Thanks for clearing up the issue of why I couldn't figure out how to attach my drive to the computer directly. Good to know that I haven't just lost the ability to recognize connectors and ports.

This is one of the "portable" WD's correct. Unfortunately, the way they make those defeats the normal "recovery" that I do. Most older "portable" drives use an adapter to mate the USB circuitry to the HDD. The new ones have the USB3.0 circuit board directly attached to the HDD without any secondary interface and that board is what normally fails and corrupts the drive.

However... If windows does "see" it in any way, GetBackData for NTFS is what I use to recover from drives (formatted or failing) Good Luck

GetBackData site: https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm

Also, I am a partner with DriveSavers and get a discount, if you want to go that way...

 

[TyrOd]

Thanks--I'm requesting a quote from WeRecoverData.com, to see how it compares to the one I got from Gillware.

Try WeRecoverData.com as they may have some low-cost approach on how to recover those files safely and efficiently. Thus if they'll find it that a more advance sophisticated technique is needed to do the job that is where you will be prepared for the cost of a successful recovery.

Don't send it to Gillware. I know for a fact they skim for easy cases they think are economical and don't do cases with more serious physical damage. You have a good chance that they will tell you it's impossible when it's not just because they couldn't do it with simple methods.

WeRecoverData seems to take R&D more seriously from what I can tell so they might be more honest about what's possible with a drive that's been dropped even if the costs are higher.

The company I personally use is datarecovery.net because they don't skim like Gillware and Divesavers do.

 

[trekzone]

Thanks--I'm requesting a quote from WeRecoverData.com, to see how it compares to the one I got from Gillware.

Try WeRecoverData.com as they may have some low-cost approach on how to recover those files safely and efficiently. Thus if they'll find it that a more advance sophisticated technique is needed to do the job that is where you will be prepared for the cost of a successful recovery.

Don't send it to Gillware. I know for a fact they skim for easy cases they think are economical and don't do cases with more serious physical damage. You have a good chance that they will tell you it's impossible when it's not just because they couldn't do it with simple methods.

WeRecoverData seems to take R&D more seriously from what I can tell so they might be more honest about what's possible with a drive that's been dropped even if the costs are higher.

The company I personally use is datarecovery.net because they don't skim like Gillware and Divesavers do.

I agree with TyrOd, though I haven't heard much about ACE. But yeah, WeRecoverData.com has a specialized R&D and a more advance state-of-the-art facilities which has a high rate of recovery success even on severely damaged storage medias.

 

[TyrOd]

Try WeRecoverData.com as they may have some low-cost approach on how to recover those files safely and efficiently. Thus if they'll find it that a more advance sophisticated technique is needed to do the job that is where you will be prepared for the cost of a successful recovery.

Thanks--I'm requesting a quote from WeRecoverData.com, to see how it compares to the one I got from Gillware.

Try WeRecoverData.com as they may have some low-cost approach on how to recover those files safely and efficiently. Thus if they'll find it that a more advance sophisticated technique is needed to do the job that is where you will be prepared for the cost of a successful recovery.

Don't send it to Gillware. I know for a fact they skim for easy cases they think are economical and don't do cases with more serious physical damage. You have a good chance that they will tell you it's impossible when it's not just because they couldn't do it with simple methods.

WeRecoverData seems to take R&D more seriously from what I can tell so they might be more honest about what's possible with a drive that's been dropped even if the costs are higher.

The company I personally use is datarecovery.net because they don't skim like Gillware and Divesavers do.

I agree with TyrOd, though I haven't heard much about ACE. But yeah, WeRecoverData.com has a specialized R&D and a more advance state-of-the-art facilities which has a high rate of recovery success even on severely damaged storage medias.

I hadn't heard much about WeRecoverData until you mentioned it here either. Just based on their website they seem to be pretty similar companies so it comes down to the individual type of damage that occurred.
It's kind of a sad thing that the most technically serious labs are not as well known as companies who pour a ton of money into marketing and very little effort into engineering talent and R&D.