Recovering data from a 3Tb hard drive

[chris1212]

Hello,

I recently found out that my computer cannot see my 3T Seagate expansion drive which contains all of my family's pictures and videos. A friend suggested to open the enclosure and retrieve the internal hard drive inside and use it as an internal hard drive as often the problem with external hard drives are just the enclosure. So I manage to open the box and get the internal hard drive inside. Assuming that the drive is still working, I have read that it will require GPT formatting to enable the 3Tb capacity of the drive. My problem is I have data to be recovered on the drive and cannot format the drive. Will I be able to see the full 3Tb if I install the drive in my computer without formatting and recover the data? My concern right now is my computer might not be able to see the full 3Tb data and lost my family's precious memory.

Thanks,
Chris

P.S. My computer is Dell Dimension 8200 (a bit old) running Windows Vista 32-bit.

 

[davidgermain]

Zero Assumption Recovery - do a google for this tool , i am messing with it at the moment, but i was silly and tried doing it over USB2, so i am re-running it when i get home.

 

[ProgressiveTyranny]

Something to try:
EasUS Partition Manager (free). It happened this morning, new 3TB Seagate, w/two partitions, new install 64bit win8 Pro on first partition. Couldn't see the full 3TB, but made OS partition 750GB and a storage partition 1.25TB. Filled it with digital goodness and went to bed. Next day I see that the storage partition is calling for reformatting, as many have experienced. ACK!
Maybe it was because I booted into my old 32bit OS on a separate drive? Anyway I tried a few things, the only progress was using the recovery app inside easUS, but all I really got was some corrupted files.
THEN I noticed that the corrupted 1.25TB partition was showing up as a 10GB partition in the partition manager. Throwing caution to the wind I dragged the box & expanded it back up to 1TB, hit go and in seconds it was completely restored! No corrupt files. Like it never happened. Phew!
I almost didn't think to try it, it was too obvious and easy. Hence this post.
Until I get a handle on the cause of it I'll keep it well under 2GB total. I feel very lucky to have gotten off so lightly.

 

[fzabkar]

Seagate's 3TB external drives are configured with 4KB sectors. When you attach the drive directly to your motherboard's SATA port you expose the drive's native 512e sectors. Therefore Windows will not be able to access your data.

A user at Seagate's forums recently recovered his data in such a situation. He needed to use Seagate's data recovery software. Unfortunately it costs US$100. That said, Seagate's software is probably an OEM version of R-Studio for NTFS which costs US$50.

An alternative solution might be to find a suitable USB-SATA adapter that is configured for 4KB LBAs. BYTECC appear to have one.

See the following thread:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-Barracuda/Using-Seagate-Barracuda-3TB-ST3000DM001-as-external-USB-2-0/td-p/186589

 

[smithbrown]

Hi,

Just try to use a data recovery software to recover your lost data of hard disk,so don't be panic nowadays there are several software available which can recover lost data very easily.You can get more information about this type of tool from here http://www.freedatarecoverysoftware.org/

 

[fzabkar]

Whatever you do, please DON'T format or initialise your drive.

 

[NoneSteve]

I think you may download some softwares to do this.
There are many good softwares
Aidfile http://www.aidfile.com
Recuva http://www.piriform.com
RecovermyFile http://recovermyfile.com
Easeus - http://easeus.com
Icare - http://www.icare-recovery.com
Stellar - http://www.stellarinfo.com

 

[devfaulter]

So the same thing happened to me - I removed a 3TB Seagate from its enclosure as its USB3.0 port had come away from the USB-SATA circuit board and after I'd unsuccessfully attempted to solder it back on.

I was unable to read the NTFS formatted drive when I attached it directly to my PC in any way, neither under Linux nor Windows, so I feared that the circuit board had encrypted the data as has been suggested in some forums. So I was about to write off my data as lost forever.

Then I was happy to discover that the free testdisk utility was able to read the all my files from the harddisk AND retain the directory structure. This page helped me along the way: https://mypkb.wordpress.com/2007/03/28/how-to-non-destructively-convert-dynamic-disks-to-basic-disks/

I'll bet that these so-called "professional" outfits that charge shed-loads of money to recover data are really just just using these free utilities and applying a bit of basic Linux knowledge.

 

[bhav_3]

Were you able to recover your data?

Hello,

I recently found out that my computer cannot see my 3T Seagate expansion drive which contains all of my family's pictures and videos. A friend suggested to open the enclosure and retrieve the internal hard drive inside and use it as an internal hard drive as often the problem with external hard drives are just the enclosure. So I manage to open the box and get the internal hard drive inside. Assuming that the drive is still working, I have read that it will require GPT formatting to enable the 3Tb capacity of the drive. My problem is I have data to be recovered on the drive and cannot format the drive. Will I be able to see the full 3Tb if I install the drive in my computer without formatting and recover the data? My concern right now is my computer might not be able to see the full 3Tb data and lost my family's precious memory.

Thanks,
Chris

P.S. My computer is Dell Dimension 8200 (a bit old) running Windows Vista 32-bit.