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HDD RAW recovery. 500gb crashed drive.

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Hi there,

A few days ago I was trying to delete some files off my hdd to try and make space. It was loading files in folders slowly, and I thought something was odd, so I just shut the computer off. the next day I started up my computer and my 500gb seagate HDD was not working properly. The majority of files on there are photos in a JPG, or NEF (raw) format. It shows up in my file explorer, but it doesn't have a bar showing its capacity or size. When I go into the drive properties-tools-check, it asks if I want to format it, and I haven't done that because from what I know that would just wipe everything on it. It has shown up as being RAW in Disk Management. I run windows off a separate SSD, but I can feel the entire computer running slower when I connect the HDD.
Disk Management.PNG

I am able to see the files on the drive with software such as RecoverIT, but I don't want to spend $80 for a one month subscription in order to get my files if I don't have to.

I've ran chksdk but that didn't seem to resolve anything. When booting, the computer would do a check, and say that it was fixing the dive. It would get to Stage 2 88% Total 65%, then freeze and bring me to the windows login screen. It doesn't reach 100%.

I've been doing some research, and I've been wondering if I can just so something like recover the partition? I still don't know which circumstances make that applicable though.

I have gathered some info with TestDisk by using the advanced tab, and GSmartControl (see photos below). I'm not sure if using the Repair BS option in TestDisk is a solution, or If another application like EaseUS Partition Recovery would work to repair or clone. I don't think there is physical damage to the drive, because when I listen to it I don't hear anything that sounds terrible. There is a quite noise coming from it that repeats every few seconds, but I cannot tell if it indicates damage or not.

TestDisk Advanced Tab (below)
TestDisk Advanced tab.png


GSmartControl attributes and Error Log
Attributes.PNG
ERROR Log.PNG


What i'm trying to know is whether or not this can be resolved without spending money. If I have to spend the money I will, but I don't want to do it unless I know its the only choice.
 
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Disk is dying. Stop messing with it as you will only make it worse until you have a clear data recovery plan; you could lose everything.

I don't think there is physical damage to the drive, because when I listen to it I don't hear anything that sounds terrible.

Your SMART report tells a different story. Drive is nearly gone.
 

silentbogo

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What i'm trying to know is whether or not this can be resolved without spending money. If I have to spend the money I will, but I don't want to do it unless I know its the only choice.
You can try things like photorec to recover files by signature, or attempt to recreate the partition table on your HDD via TestDisk.
Also, since your partition is still there, you can try and dump it as an image to another disk or mount it directly in linux (just use the offset for that partition, if you have more than one).
I'd image the whole thing before it crumbles and do any of the above operations on an image instead of the disk itself.

I am able to see the files on the drive with software such as RecoverIT, but I don't want to spend $80 for a one month subscription in order to get my files if I don't have to.
LSoft Partition Recovery or File Recovery is cheaper, and it's a one-time payment (no subscriptions). Usually I don't do data recovery for my customers, but after helping out few friends and family I've decided to spend a few bucks on it just to make my life easier.
BTW, you can try the free version of their Partition Recovery. Recently I had a case with similar problem (two partitions got messed up on an external HDD), so I wanted to check if it even sees those partitions, and managed to fix it on the spot, without taking HDD to the office and resorting to my paid version.


Disk is dying. Stop messing with it as you will only make it worse until you have a clear data recovery plan; you could lose everything.
It's only 56 bad sectors, he just got unlucky to hit one or few on GUID table or mess up the MFT a little. It's more than healthy to do at least few runs of ddrescue or any other imaging software.
Not saying that it's super-duper safe, but it's definitely alive enough for a few imaging runs.
 

silentbogo

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LoL. Just noticed this in TPU news segment:
 
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OP, use a file recovery app like recuva, partition wizard, etc to recover the files. Also check the HDD serial number with Seagate online to determine if a firmware update exists for the drive. Then run the Seatools util & re-zero the drive to clear uncorrectable & current pending sectors. You may find that it's stable enough for some continued use if bad sectors stop increasing.
 
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A little off topic, but I just had an idea. Would it be helpful to make a sector by sector clone over to a known healthy hdd for the purpose of testing different recovery options on the clone(s) rather than the dying drive? But I guess that probably is in conflict with R-T-B's great advice of "Stop messing with it" :)
 
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It's only 56 bad sectors, he just got unlucky to hit one or few on GUID table or mess up the MFT a little. It's more than healthy to do at least few runs of ddrescue or any other imaging software.
Not saying that it's super-duper safe, but it's definitely alive enough for a few imaging runs.

That's not the data field (you guys really need to learn how to read smart data). Try 14704 bad sectors with 17168 pending.

Drive is on it's last legs.

A little off topic, but I just had an idea. Would it be helpful to make a sector by sector clone over to a known healthy hdd for the purpose of testing different recovery options on the clone(s) rather than the dying drive? But I guess that probably is in conflict with R-T-B's great advice of "Stop messing with it" :)

If that's your plan you can do it. What I meant is stop running it without a clear plan. An image isn't a bad idea if all data is of equal value.

LoL. Just noticed this in TPU news segment:

Won't help this isn't a deleted-from-otherwise-healthy filesystem situation.
 
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I think one of my drives is maybe going to fail, it has a current pending sector count of 24 and a offline uncorrectable of 24. It has been working fine like this for 2 months, it started out as the number 8 or 12 and in the last month it has gone to 24.
The drive works fine though.
How do I transfer all the data to another hdd? If I make an image out of it how do I do that? Can the errors be fixed?
Here is from GSmart Control - Untitlederr.pngUntitledor.png
 
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I re-zero drives with uncorrectable & current pending sectors to commit if it's a genuine bad sector or to clear if it's a glitch. Same advice as to the OP, go to Seagate's site to check for a FW update. Many of their HDDs shipped with suboptimal strats, excessve head parking/AAM, etc, then re-zero. One indicator for Seagate is BB reported uncorrectable errors. Yours has bottomed out. Not a guaranteed failure of itself, but the FW is working overtime. You also have 33k POH. If it's a data/storage drive, just copy it onto another HDD. If boot, then clone, etc.
 
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What i'm trying to know is whether or not this can be resolved without spending money. If I have to spend the money I will, but I don't want to do it unless I know its the only choice.

Your drive is dying and every time you power it on, or read from it, or run yet another application against it, its lifetime gets shorter. It may already be too far gone to get anything off it.

The only relevant question is whether the data on there is worth $80 to you. If it is, stop p**sing about, shell out the eighty bucks, and salvage what you can (which again, may be nothing). If it isn't, stop wasting our time. And in future, have backups.

I think one of my drives is maybe going to fail, it has a current pending sector count of 24 and a offline uncorrectable of 24. It has been working fine like this for 2 months, it started out as the number 8 or 12 and in the last month it has gone to 24.
The drive works fine though.
How do I transfer all the data to another hdd? If I make an image out of it how do I do that? Can the errors be fixed?
Here is from GSmart Control - View attachment 160709View attachment 160710

Don't hijack someone else's thread, that's incredibly rude. Post your own one.
 
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Ah sorry about that, I was wondering if I should have made a new thread.
 
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Having been on the receiving end of silimar situations, the drive is definitely dying. Pull it and keep it powered off until you know what you're doing with it.

Every write and power on is potentially fatal now.

Depending how critical the content is, I'd send it to a data recovery specialist. If it's not so critical that you would pay for it, familiarise with some of the more advanced data recovery tools on a good drive and resign yourself to losing it if you screw up/get unlucky.

Dpeending where the data and bad sectors physically are on the drive, you may be able to resize partitions so that the drive treats the bad sectors as unallocated space. (I don't know if that works on modern systems - haven't tried since the XP days). I had pretty good results with diskinternals back in the day.
 
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