Question Recovery From Harddrive I/O Error

MaxArk

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Apr 6, 2012
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While working with the contents of my backup harddrive with Windows Explorer, it became unresponsive and crashed. Now, the contents of that drive are exhibiting preculiar behaviour.

The drive contents are still there, but when I try to access them ...
PDF files ... Adobe Acrobat Reader opens, but the not the file selected. "There was an error opening this document. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."
EXE files .... nothing happens
Folders ... "F:\ ... is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error." Interestingly, I don't get this error withthe folder I was working in when Explorer crashed, although when I drill down to the actual file level, I get the error.

I did a chkdsk (chkdsk F: /f /r /x) and it did it's thing although it didn't indicate having encountered any problems that prevented it from resolving any found issues. It reported that it was all fixed up.

However, I am still having the same errors accessing this drive\s contents. Please, I hope I didn't lose my babckup data!

Do I have any options to consider to try and recover from this?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
A "backup" is a second (or third/fourth) copy of your data.
So presumably this exact same data lives elsewhere?

Drives die. Even 'backup drives'.

Treat this drive as suspect, get a new one, and continue on your your backup routine.
 

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
Make and model of your HDD? Often times Windows level HDD checks don't show much nor can they repair anything. You're going to need a HDD utility/tool specific to your HDD's manufacturer. Are you on the latest BIOS for your platform(motherboard)?
 

MaxArk

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It is a Seagate exterrnal drive. I have found that my data is accessible to a point after I remove the cable from the back of the drive enclosure and plug it back in.

I'm taking advantage of this to transfer the contents to another drive, but I don't know how successful I will be. The transfer is incredibly slow. 53.9 GB estimated to take 7 hours and 30 minutes, and I have close to 2TB to transfer all together.

I find it odd also that the icon for this drive in Windows Explorer is not your typical rectangular drive icon. It is the regular drive icon but with a little indistinguishable symbol superimposed over the left side of it. I tried looking up different icons but couldn't find a resource to identify it let alone tell you what it is.
 

MaxArk

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Thiis isn"t a backup of the current system\s files. These are archived files backed up and removed from previous content. Theoriginal files are no longer in the main system, but relocated to a "backup drive|" Perhaps the term backup isn't the proper term for the purpose of this faulting drive, but rather an "archive drive"
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Oof. Yeah, that's bad news.

Honestly, the longer you run this hard drive, the more likely you won't recover anything. If this data is actually important, ti's time to pay for professionals before you lose everything. It can be pretty pricey, but not backing up important data usually is.