HDD Still Visible but Data Gone

[p_l]

I have an internal 3TB Hitachi HDD that just today doesn't let me access any data on it anymore. The drive still shows up in Windows [Local Disk G:], but without its original name or any space used indicator. In Disc Management, it shows up as RAW now (it used to be NTFS). When I double click on it in Windows, a message comes up that I need to format it before I can use it.

Can this drive be repaired and its data made accessible once more?

[themaster1]

yes there are solutions for that search on the web a little

solution°1 assign a letter (ex. H) for this drive in the hdd manager

If it's not working try testdisk

[p_l]

It already has a letter assigned to it: G: just like before, but its name has changed to Local Disk.






I'm trying TestDisk now. The problem I'm experiencing is pretty much exactly the following from their guide:

Windows Explorer or Disk Manager displays the first primary partition as raw (unformatted) and Windows prompts: The drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now?

[sanlyn]

According to the image shown above, you're on the verge of crapping out drives H, K, and M.

[p_l]

TestDisk ran overnight. This morning, I get this message:



I hadn't changed any jumpers, of course, when the problem started. The jumpers have always been the same.

Hitting Continue gives me this:



Confusingly, it seems to indicate a Mac format??
The guide on the TestDisk site shows I should be getiting something like this at this point:



Not sure what to do next.

This particular HDD is connected via an internal SATA card - this type of thing:


Maybe I could try connecting the drive directly to the motherboard to see if the card is the problem?

[DB83]

I had a hdd go awol some time back. Same sort of report.

I recovered the data using Zero Assumption Recovery (files saved to a external hdd) but the disk itself was a gonner.

[themaster1]

Before trying testdisk try this:
open a dos command > start >run> cmd type: chkdsk C: /F (C being the letter for your drive, change accordingly)

If nothing change, with testdisk you basically do a "write" " rewrite partition table"

Again if nothing work still try this (this is the solution that worked for me some time ago)

Run your computer in safe boot go to: computer> right click on the hdd> properties>security>advanced>owner> admin> and there should be a box to check "include sub folders" so you enable that. From that point the OS should work a little and "get the data back"
Tested on Xp, not sure about vista/win7

Basically it's a bug of Xp (and possibly vsita/7), it happened to me with an external seagate drive usb

[ranchhand]

It wouldn't hurt to try to access the drive from a virtual drive utility such as Reatogo; sometimes you can pull data off a failing hard drive onto a flash drive. Worth a shot and it's free. You definitely can't hurt anything.

[aedipuss]

get the hatachi drive tools and try that.

is testdisk new enough to know the difference between a GPT-formatted drive instead of an MBR-formatted drive? it could really screw it up if not.

[Richard_G]

I've used Unformat (http://www.unformat.com/) on drive that had failed and recovered everything except a couple of jpg files.

[Cornucopia]

Whatever you do, remember to ALWAYS ALWAYS put the output of the "recovery" on a different drive!

Scott

[p_l]

Before trying testdisk try this:
open a dos command > start >run> cmd type: chkdsk C: /F (C being the letter for your drive, change accordingly)

Starting to try some suggestions here. This first one yielded the following:




Also tried Hitachi Drive Tools. What they offer seems to be called HGST Align Tool, which is "powered by Acronis," so really it's an Acronis tool, as far as I can tell. Anyway, when I ran it, it just reported back that my drive doesn't need to be aligned, whatever that means.

Currently running Unformat... Gotta love the message "Status: Very Bad."

[deadrats]

first of all you say this is a 3tb hdd yet all the tools you have screenshots from seem to indicate that there's only one partition on it which is just under 750gb. are you sure that pci card supports drives that big? i was under the impression that most consumer raid cards max out at about 2tb total drive size, i would try plugging it directly into the motherboards sata connector and see if that resolves the problem.

i would also download a linux live distro (a distro that runs from a cd/dvd or a flash drive) and see if that can see/access the drive.

if the above doesn't work i hope you have all the important porn, i mean files, backup up because i'm not very optimistic about your chances of recovering the data without professional help.

[aedipuss]

i went and looked at the hatachi site, the outlook is not good. even hatachi doesn't have a program to test a 3TB drive.

NOTE: Currently the Drive Fitness Test does not support 3TB and greater internal drives.

[p_l]

first of all you say this is a 3tb hdd yet all the tools you have screenshots from seem to indicate that there's only one partition on it which is just under 750gb. are you sure that pci card supports drives that big? i was under the impression that most consumer raid cards max out at about 2tb total drive size, i would try plugging it directly into the motherboards sata connector and see if that resolves the problem.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. But for the past year or two it worked fine as a 3 TB drive. But yes, I'll try connecting it directly to the motherboard's SATA to perhaps rule out a card malfunction.

if the above doesn't work i hope you have all the important porn, i mean files, backup up because i'm not very optimistic about your chances of recovering the data without professional help.

Fortunately, I have redundant backups of just about all of my most precious Rule 34 files.

[Ethlred]

Looks like it is time for a file recovery tool. And a new hard drive to save the files to.

And a change in behavior. You are over filling your drives. When the free space gets that low problems occur. Windows defrag stops working with less than 15 percent free space and under 10 percent you are just asking for problems.



Date Rescue PC 3 by PROSOFT ENGINEERING is supposed to be pretty good and can even be run by booting from the instal disk. I am going on reviews for that, not personal experience. If the drive can be read at all you should be able to recover much of the data with some recovery tool or another. Might lose all the file names though.

[p_l]

And a change in behavior. You are over filling your drives. When the free space gets that low problems occur. Windows defrag stops working with less than 15 percent free space and under 10 percent you are just asking for problems.

You are right of course, but the funny thing is, unlike some of the other ones, that drive was only filled about half way.



Meanwhile, Unformat was able to find some of my stuff. Offloading to another HDD in progress...

Still, I'd really rather get the drive working again if it was a simple format problem, although now I don't trust it so much anymore. I'd also like to recover a lot more of my files.

[nic2k4]

Whatever you do make sure not to write to that drive, that also means be careful where you plug it into i.e. on a Mac, OSx always writes hidden system folders on new drives. Never run CHKDSK /F on a drive that needs data recovered, you can run it without the /F though (in your case it wouldn't matter as it doesn't work on RAW drives).

I guess the safest thing to do first is to try to recover the data like you're doing with undelete; I've had good results with Recuva. Just remember to save the files to a different drive. To get your drive back in working order, all you need to do is allow Windows to format it, but all the data will be lost.

Instead of formatting, you can try to run FixMBR. I haven't tried it, but this procedure with TestDisk might be better.

I've managed to modify a drives file system flag before, I was trying to extract video from a PVR. It was a while ago, but if memory serves I used Paragon Backup and Recovery to change the file system flag, then write the image back to another drive. You could also extract the files directly out of the image file.

In fact, your best move would be to create an image file of that drive before doing anything.

[p_l]

I had a hdd go awol some time back. Same sort of report.

I recovered the data using Zero Assumption Recovery (files saved to a external hdd) but the disk itself was a gonner.

Unformat was only able to recover 40 or 50 files out what I estimate are thousands and thousands of files originally on the HDD.

Currently running Zero Assumption Recovery, but it's very slow. I started around 7 hours ago and it's only at 34%, but I'm willing to give it a chance to do its job overnight.



If no joy, I may try Recuva next.

[themaster1]

time to try testdisk i guess, its files recovery feature i mean....

[nic2k4]

Does that SATA card the drive is connected to give you a configuration option when you boot (F4, CTRL-S...)? It's possible the card needs to have the drive re-configured, happens with RAID cards, most of the time you just reset the array and everything goes back to normal. You might be better off with connecting that drive to the M/B with one of these cables.

If the problem was caused by something else like a bad shutdown or an MBR or SVI update that got corrupted, you could turn off write caching for that drive.

[p_l]

ZAR is still churning away, in progress, after more than 24 hours... Man, it's slow, but I'm loathe to cancel the process I've now committed so much time to.

I will try connecting directly to the motherboard as soon as it finishes.

[DB83]

I think the speed is related to whether you are using the free version or the paid one and, naturally, the size of the drive.

My 'missing' HDD was only 500 gig. Somewhat smaller than a 3tb monster.

[Richard_G]

I will try connecting directly to the motherboard as soon as it finishes.

It'll be amusing if you find that it was the interface card all along and after all this effort the drive appears fine when plugged directly into the motherboard......

[DB83]

Well, if I had a shilling I would bet that the drive will still appear as it is now.

My HDD was connected to the MB. So was the replacement. But only one was reporting correctly. Guess which one.

[p_l]

I can be patient, but this was getting into OCD territory. After nearly two days of ZAR, I didn't want to wait anymore and I stopped it and opened up the computer.

And the answer is... the drive is kaput. If fact, it turned out not to be the 3TB Hitachi that was connected to the internal/external SATA card, but another identical 3TB Hitachi HDD that was connected to the motherboard all along.

So that now makes three different drives from three major manufacturers that have failed in my experience over the last 12 years: first a Western Digital, then a Seagate and now a Hitachi. Hard to know which manufacturer to trust anymore.

Anyhow, I've removed it and hooked it up through a toaster to a secondary (but fast) computer. I tried Recuva, but it wouldn't proceed because it asked me to format it first, just like the message Windows now gives me for that drive when I double-click on it. So I'm letting ZAR have another go at it, but not in my face on my main machine.

While I had the machine open, I installed a USB 3.0 card I had recently ordered, and now I just went ahead and ordered a couple of these 4TB beasts as replacements.





Still would like to be able to salvage my files, though.

[jollyjohn]

Try a few more recovery programs. O&O, File Scavenger, There are so many.

[p_l]

Indeed, I'm open to suggestions. I've run ZAR a couple of times, now. It churns away for 2 or 3 days and then craps out with an error message.

So in what order of priority/chance of success should I run what next?

[nic2k4]

I tried Recuva, but it wouldn't proceed because it asked me to format it first, just like the message Windows now gives me...

Oops, I forgot Recuva accesses the drive through Windows' API, if Windows doesn't see the drive neither does it. I know for sure that Easeus Data Recovery Wizard can recover data from RAW partitions, the only reason I didn't mention it is that the free version can only recover up to 1GB of data total. You could still try it to see what can possibly be done.

The Trinitiy Rescue Kit is the tool for all PC repair, but I think that could get complicated and one of the tools they use is Testdisk. I know you tried it with no luck, but did you look at the procedure posted by dEAne? Next thing you should try is the FIXMBR command, it might be able to recover your partition info. If not, at least it won't overwrite any data sectors.

[DB83]

What error message ?

It really sounds like this HDD is fooked.