Strange HDD Failure - Trying to Recover Files

[patrickcrinnigan]

Hey all,

I've got a Seagate 3tb Barracuda ST3000DM001 HDD (NOTORIOUSLY BAD from my research today) that has been having problems. Its a drive I keep all my media in so not running the OS (I have a SSD for this). I haven't heard any bad jarring etc but I had slow read/write times for a few hours and the next day I couldn't access the drive anymore. Done lots of reading here and elsewhere and can't seem to find a solution, so here goes:

- If plugged in the drive affects my boot times hugely. Can't be sure but think boot time has been reduced by rerouting system folders back to default C drive (Music, Pictures and Videos) from HDD media links. When HDD is not plugged in the boot time is normal.

- When comp boots eventually, hdd is discoverable in Disc Management and wants to be Initialized. I don't want to do this because obviously I'll lose my data. I have tried disk drill, recuva, wondershare, icare data recovery and many more... you get the picture. Some cannot see it, others can, but show it as 0kb device and cannot recover anything.

The interesting part:
- After booting with HDD connected so that DM asks me to initilize, I remove the sata power then replug it in (I have motherboard that is AHCI and I have enabled hot swapping on the sata ports). A few seconds later the drive appears on system with correct label and size with space - exactly as if I was plugging in a USB. When I then try to do ANYTHING i.e. run a recovery tool or even just open it in file explorer the program freezes. I can still use chrome but any other program is unusable. Once I managed to get far in enough using file explorer to see some of my files, but I can never get far along enough to move or save anything.

Seeing as it becomes discoverable every time, that suggests to me that my HDD isn't damaged beyond repair and the data is still there. Any ideas on how I can reach it?

Cheers for the help

 

[USAFRet]

The drive is giving serious errors.
You've tried all the regular consumer level data recovery tools. None have worked.

It's time to either give it up as a lost cause, or send it off to a data recovery company. ($$$).

 

[patrickcrinnigan]

The drive is giving serious errors.
You've tried all the regular consumer level data recovery tools. None have worked.

It's time to either give it up as a lost cause, or send it off to a data recovery company. ($$$).

The strange thing is when I hot plug it as described above it does show the hdd correctly, it just freezes my system. Why would it be affecting my SSD in this way? Surely a folder that just contains media shouldn't be affecting my programs and their ability to run?

Obviously if I can solve this then fantastic, but I also just want to increase my understanding on this subject. There doesn't seem to be any logical explanation in my mind for the system freezing because of the hdd (which contains no important files or programs...)

Thanks

 

[USAFRet]

Plug that drive in, and the system is trying to read it.
Because it fails, it can lock up the system.

Even if YOU aren't trying to open anything on it, the OS is still trying to read it, in anticipation of you wanting to open something on it.

 

[patrickcrinnigan]

Plug that drive in, and the system is trying to read it.
Because it fails, it can lock up the system.

Even if YOU aren't trying to open anything on it, the OS is still trying to read it, in anticipation of you wanting to open something on it.

Funnily enough I've managed to pull a few files off the drive by clicking a folder, letting it freeze, unplug and replug and continue in this manner. I also have to unplug and replug between copy of any data files across haha. Probably won't work for anything big though!

Managed to get crystaldisc to analyse too
https://imgur.com/kmNYfcd
Looks like the poor ah heck is in a very bad way! Shame it's only done 6000 hours and my WD black has done 15000 and is still fine! Guess I should avoid Seagate in the future...

Do you think that loading in another computer would have more luck?

If anyone has any more advice on how I can support the system with reading it for a longer period than just a few seconds before meltdown freezing that would be very welcome! The data still seems to be intact, just accessing it is proving tough.

Thanks again!

 

[patrickcrinnigan]

Just to finish this off in case anyone with a similar problem comes across this thread -

I managed to recover all the most important data (20GBs worth). I did this by continually removing SATA power from HDD (NOT the sata connection from HDD to motherboard) and reconnecting it. Every time I did this it allowed me to perform the previous task my computer had frozen on.
(for example: double click to open a folder in the HDD in windows explorer, computer freezes, disconnect sata power, reconnect sata power, HDD spins up and then windows explorer enters the folder I had clicked)

Using this process I copied folders from HDD to desktop (as this was easiest location to move to) and peformed disconnect/reconnect, when reconnecting sata it performed the copy function. The data transfer numbers were SKETCHY (between 155kbs and 150mbs varying wildly) but it managed to hold out until the end of the data transfer. Disconnecting just sata power and reconnecting seems to allow it to continue if it stops transferring.

This process allowed me to recover my data from a HDD that was proving difficult to access, couldn't be found by recovery software and kept sending my OS into meltdown anytime I try to perform tasks with it connected.

Feel free to mark this thread as solved/closed - thanks for the help

 

[USAFRet]

The real way to prevent this type of situation is an actual backup, created before the physical drive dies.

Right now, if any of the 8 drives among my 3 main house PC's, or the other 8 drives in or connected to my NAS box, were to die a horrible death right now...whatever is on any of those drives is backed up on something else.
There is almost never a single copy of anything.

Any 'recovery' simply means buying a new drive, and getting the data from the other place it lives.

 

[patrickcrinnigan]

The real way to prevent this type of situation is an actual backup, created before the physical drive dies.

Right now, if any of the 8 drives among my 3 main house PC's, or the other 8 drives in or connected to my NAS box, were to die a horrible death right now...whatever is on any of those drives is backed up on something else.
There is almost never a single copy of anything.

Any 'recovery' simply means buying a new drive, and getting the data from the other place it lives.

Understandably and agreed. I back up my drives regularly - too many hours of lost game play and university work redos has made me extra paranoid. Annoyingly and stupidly I got a little lazy and happened to do a big week of work since the previous backup - if I had lost the data it wouldn't have been the end of the world, just if recovery was possible then I get a week of my life back. Definitely could've been a lot worse!

Thanks again for the help!