Recovering data from external hard drive?

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wickedDUDE

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Jun 25, 2006
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Hello,

My external hard drive recently became unreadable. The attachment shows what I see under Computer -> Manage -> Storage -> Disk Management.

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Capture.png


Does anyone recommend any data recovery software? What can I do to retrieve the data from this disk, or is this a lost cause?

Thanks
 


You may have to buy another harddrive of the same exact model and transfer the platters if the seeking arm is broken.
 
Assuming this is a USB drive, the problem may be in the circuitry that converts the USB connector to IDE, SATA, etc. If it's not too old, the actual HDD inside will probably not be IDE, but SATA or eSATA.

To check this out, you can open up the enclosure, pull out the HDD, and connect it directly to a desktop board. You will need to know what type of connectors are supported on your desktop board, and you may need a converter cable.

You may then be able to access this drive from your OS; if not, see if it shows up in the POST screen when the machine first boots up. If so, the data is at least partially recoverable using something like SpinRite.

If it doesn't show up in the POST screen, it is either:

- bad connection
- mechanical failure, only recoverable by a professional who can pull out the platters
- totally fucked
 
I had a USB drive go bad on me and was able to recover the majority of it with a program called GetDataBack. One of those deals where you set the program up to do its thing and then go to bed because it takes quite a while. After recovery I had a number of photos that become unreadable, but was able to recover much of what I was concerned about.
 
Linux Live CD before believing Windows "Disk Management Tool".

This is normally the point when a client regrets not taking the "ever-so-slightly more expensive" proposal (by a mere few grand at most) of having offsite shadow copy replication, and realises the true value of their data.

I wish you the best of luck chap, but it's normally at this point I decide how much of a wanker the client is and whether I should offer data recovery WITH a much more expensive solution to prevent "THIS DISASTER" ever happening again.

It's amazing how much people are prepared pay sometimes, and how that "slightly-more-expensive-at-first" approach suddenly seems ever-so-fucking-cheap.

Hopefully you're not in the "I didn't realise 1's & 0's had value until now" camp.

For the record - I don't do data recovery personally as I don't have the equipment, but I'll certainly not let get that in the way of a very healthy mark-up. ;)

By way of offering some tiny bit of genuine input to this thread - probably Spinrite if you really don't want to shell out ££££.
 
Hello,

Thanks for the suggestions. The hard drive is an external drive that works from USB - probably has around 200 GB of data on it, I believe the total drive is 500 GB.

I may try Spinrite. How long do you think it would take it to process?
 
wickedDUDE said:
Hello,

Thanks for the suggestions. The hard drive is an external drive that works from USB - probably has around 200 GB of data on it, I believe the total drive is 500 GB.

I may try Spinrite. How long do you think it would take it to process?
Click to expand...

Plan on it taking a couple days. But before you try the full drive recovery, have it try to recover the MBR/Partition tables. If you get lucky, you'll get it back up in a few seconds.
 
wickedDUDE said:
Hello,

Thanks for the suggestions. The hard drive is an external drive that works from USB - probably has around 200 GB of data on it, I believe the total drive is 500 GB.

I may try Spinrite. How long do you think it would take it to process?
Click to expand...

If you take the drive OUT of the USB enclosure, you will find that it is most likely just a normal SATA hard drive that can be plugged directly into your motherboard. Why don't you try that first?
 
let's hope the heads/platters aren't corrupted. I had a drive that had some great.....videos....that I wanted to recover and they wanted 1500 to do it. For that, I can just download new..."videos". I tried buying another enclosure and even setting up the drive as a slave on another computer, no dice. I just gave up.

SOME VIDEOS ARE WORTH GETTING...damnit
 
Never had much luck with spinrite plus it takes forever. Look at "GetDataBack for NTFS" to recover your files.
 
wickedDUDE said:
Hello,

Thanks for the suggestions. The hard drive is an external drive that works from USB - probably has around 200 GB of data on it, I believe the total drive is 500 GB.

I may try Spinrite. How long do you think it would take it to process?
Click to expand...

jryan21 said:
Plan on it taking a couple days. But before you try the full drive recovery, have it try to recover the MBR/Partition tables. If you get lucky, you'll get it back up in a few seconds.
Click to expand...

This.

It will take a couple days, but is well worth the wait
 
So I went through this with a USB stick about 2 months ago for a friend that had lost 2 weeks of work because the USB wouldn't mount.

I tried everything from USB tools to data recovery programs. The linux tools, managed to help me repair the MBR. Most of the data was there. Some of the documents would open up with garbled text. Some of the files didn't even have extensions.

I tried all of these:

1. EasyRecovery Professional Edition
2. Active@ Partition Recovery Enterprise
3. DiskInternals Partition Recovery 3.8

I believe EasyRecovery got almost all the files. The other two have the capability to get files but are more designed for MBR recovery.

Either way try them all as you might get better results with one vs the other. Also DiskInternals has lots of different tools for disk salvage. Also you might be able to see the disk with something like a Linux Reader from Disk Internals.

Those apps are all pay but you can find a way to try them out you know.

Regardless, you need to remove that drive from the enclosure and try it in your computer.
 
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