[SOLVED] Trying to salvage data with EaseUS but it's stuck at 20% ?

[MentalParadox]

Okay, so I have this fairly old 1,5 TB Lacie drive from 2013. Last week, it started giving me an error when trying to explore the drive. The few times it does let me in, it's EXTREMELY slow when opening folders and files (if it works at all) and causes regular Explorer crashes. So yeah, a dying drive. I knew it would happen some day, given its age...

So, I downloaded EaseUS, a software I'd used before, got a license, and started scanning. Unfortunately, the deep scan hangs at 20% with 5 hours and 15 minutes remaining. It keeps scanning, and the remaining time will drop to 5 hours and 10 minutes, but then it'll reset to 5 hours and 15 minutes remaining. It never gets beyond 20% complete. I waited a full day.

I tried Recovering one folder (full of video files), and it managed to recover about 75% of them. The ones that failed are still there, but have a filesize of 0 and cannot be opened.

So my question is; is this indicative of a physically broken drive, or is this a logic problem that software can circumvent? Can I still save the seemingly doomed files?
Is there a way to even get the scan to complete, and if it did, would I be able to extract ALL of the files?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

I'd say the drive is too far gone for data retrieval at home ---- a data recovery service is probably your onlyoption now but you'll need deep pockets for that.

 

[MentalParadox]

That's what I was afraid of... I'll salvage what I can, and keep more than one backup in the future.

 

[USAFRet]

That's what I was afraid of... I'll salvage what I can, and keep more than one backup in the future.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[USAFRet]

The ones that failed are still there, but have a filesize of 0 and cannot be opened.

No, they're not 'there'.

You're seeing an entry in the File Allocation Table. Not the actual file.

Like the table of contents of a book.
The table of contents says "Such and such is on page 83."
But the actual "page 83" is gone gone gone.

 

[fzabkar]

I would clone your drive with HDDSuperClone. It knows how to deal with bad heads/media. Then run data recovery software against the clone, if necessary.

It's too bad that you already paid for EaseUS. I recommend DMDE (US20) and RAISE (US$25). The free version of DMDE can recover up to 4000 files from any one folder.

 

[MentalParadox]

I would clone your drive with HDDSuperClone. It knows how to deal with bad heads/media. Then run data recovery software against the clone, if necessary.

It says it's Linux only.

 

[fzabkar]

It says it's Linux only.

Yes, but it has a Live CD which you can boot from.

If you keep thrashing your drive with an unintelligent tool, you will accelerate its failure. HDDSuperClone skips over bad patches in the media and clones all the easy sectors on the first pass. Then it attempts the more difficult sectors on subsequent passes.

 

[MentalParadox]

Yes, but it has a Live CD which you can boot from.

If you keep thrashing your drive with an unintelligent tool, you will accelerate its failure. HDDSuperClone skips over bad patches in the media and clones all the easy sectors on the first pass. Then it attempts the more difficult sectors on subsequent passes.

Forgive me for being a layman, but Live CD you can boot from? My issue is with an external hard drive, not my PC's built-in hard drive. My PC boots and runs just fine. Unless I'm not quite getting what this is supposed to be doing.

 

[fzabkar]

If you insist on using Windows based tools to work with your degrading drive, then you will probably fail. You need to remove Windows from the process by booting from a Linux CD. Sorry, but I'm not aware of any intelligent Windows cloning tool.

 

[MentalParadox]

If you insist on using Windows based tools to work with your degrading drive, then you will probably fail. You need to remove Windows from the process by booting from a Linux CD. Sorry, but I'm not aware of any intelligent Windows cloning tool.

I wasn't insisting on anything. I said I did not understand why you mentioned booting from a CD. Now I get it.
Just purely out of curiosity, why are Windows-based tools in your opinion "unintelligent"? Is there a factual basis for this, or is this purely OS tribalism?

 

[fzabkar]

I wasn't insisting on anything. I said I did not understand why you mentioned booting from a CD. Now I get it.
Just purely out of curiosity, why are Windows-based tools in your opinion "unintelligent"? Is there a factual basis for this, or is this purely OS tribalism?

I don't use Linux on any of my machines, so I don't have any prejudices in that regard. Linux is the preferred platform because it affords more control over error processing. Windows just keeps hammering away at a bad sector until its timeout expires. That could be several seconds. An intelligent cloning tool minimises the number of retries on the first pass (ideally 0), so it doesn't bog down on bad patches in the media.

As I said, I don't favour one OS over the other, I'm just relaying what the data recovery professionals are saying in other forums.

 

[MentalParadox]

I don't use Linux on any of my machines, so I don't have any prejudices in that regard. Linux is the preferred platform because it affords more control over error processing. Windows just keeps hammering away at a bad sector until its timeout expires. That could be several seconds. An intelligent cloning tool minimises the number of retries on the first pass (ideally 0), so it doesn't bog down on bad patches in the media.

As I said, I don't favour one OS over the other, I'm just relaying what the data recovery professionals are saying in other forums.

Interesting. Could I use this Linux boot CD and still keep Windows on my PC? I have zero intention of switching to another OS just for salvaging one drive. If this can be a one-time thing, I will try it. But no way I'm doing it if this means losing my current OS for good.

 

[Viorala]

https://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29

Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier is free and actually works in my experience, but I'd only use it in an emergency with text files. It is super slow. Like 14 hours for one movie slow. And the other guys are right, you're hdd is crapping out further the more you use it, so while you may be ok with 14 hours, the reality is that you'll have less time than that and will lose the rest of your files. Also, my hdd with corrupted sectors actually turned my windows boot sata ssd into unallocated data, which I thought was very rude.

 

[fzabkar]

The Live CD will not disturb your existing installation. However you must be very careful when specifying the destination drive, otherwise you could overwrite the wrong drive. Therefore it would be safest to disconnect all your internal drives for the duration of the cloning process.

 

[MentalParadox]

The Live CD will not disturb your existing installation. However you must be very careful when specifying the destination drive, otherwise you could overwrite the wrong drive. Therefore it would be safest to disconnect all your internal drives for the duration of the cloning process.

Alright, I'll give that a go. Thanks so much!