[SOLVED] Relatively old SATA HDD working, but cannot connect it and recover data

[orenl2007]

Hey guys,

I own 5 years old 1TB HDD that belongs to Seagate. I have important information on this HDD, one day I have opened a very old file from this HDD and suddenly it started to work properly.

The next time I booted my computer it went into recovery mode, trying to defrag 1m pieces at rate of 1 data point every minute (WTF). It's not my main HDD but there were some windows files so I guess it triggered the recovery mode.
Anyway, I was sick of this HDD and disconnected it from my PC, getting an external SATA connector with power. I have another HDD that connects perfectly ok through this connector, but when trying to connect my defective HDD, It's doing noises of working and spinning inside - but my windows do not recognize the HDD and refuse to open file explorer.

I cannot see it on my disk management tool or through cmd. Once I had notification it's corrupted and windows cannot read it, and that's it. right now it's working next to me but the PC simply refuses to acknowledge it.

Wondered if there any software that might be able to extract the missing files from the HDD, or if there any other possible solution?

Thanks!

 

[DSzymborski]

Just because you hear it doesn't mean it's working. It's likely that this drive is physically failing at this point (rebooting it into a defrag almost certainly sped up its demise). If you can't get it to read using multiple connections or software like Recuva, then you have two choices: a very expensive bill from a professional recovery lab (these can go into four figures) or doing without the files.

Unfortunately, the only way to protect important information from being lost is to back it up properly before it becomes lost. A robust backup plan is a very basic part of PC ownership and being negligent will quite frequently come back to haunt you. Important files should be treated as if they are important.