Evening all … questioning here remembering the old tech talk forum, not sure where else to go.

So they say to keep a backup of everything … but my backup drive is screwed and I’ve now seemingly lost stuff that I’d stored from my last 4 laptops including photos and videos that are now irretrievable.

Well I’ve got a WD SATA 3.0TB external hard drive. It was connected to this laptop that I’m using to type this, and I was copying files on to it before this laptop is given a factory reset this Friday at work. It seemed to finish copying just fine. I unplugged it, and have now plugged it back in to look through some of the stuff I had previously put on it, and it now says “You need to format the disk in drive D: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?”

May I ask if anyone knows of something that can be done to recover it, or does it just sound like it’s screwed?

Additional … at that point, I click Cancel, and it says “D:\ is not accessible. The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.”

Perhaps try one of the Linux utils that do a good job of reading damaged HDD’s. I’m not sure what they’re called though sorry.

Sympathies JTQ, but I can’t help. Hopefully someone here has better knowledge of these things.

I will just sound this general note of warning to all: a data back-up is not really a “back-up” if it then becomes the only example of that data. Try to maintain two copies.

Bubblecar said:

Sympathies JTQ, but I can’t help. Hopefully someone here has better knowledge of these things.

I will just sound this general note of warning to all: a data back-up is not really a “back-up” if it then becomes the only example of that data. Try to maintain two copies.

FWIW I’ve done this on my main PC, and it works very well. I literally just flick a power switch and everything gets backed-up automatically.

https://youtu.be/BZnljKjJLvM

Put the drive in a plastic bag and stick it in the freezer for a few hours. If the problem is an overheating electronic component then this technique may bring it back to life for a while.

Another thing to try is a different USB cable and USB socket in the PC. Maybe a different HDD caddy as well. Eliminate every one of those first before you have a good look at the drive.

Take out to a data recovery company. It may cost $50, it may cost a couple of thousand, depending on what’s wrong with the drive. But most of the time the data is recoverable. Just depends on what it’s worth to you.

Kothos said:

Take out to a data recovery company. It may cost $50, it may cost a couple of thousand, depending on what’s wrong with the drive. But most of the time the data is recoverable. Just depends on what it’s worth to you.

I did that with a failed drive on my old PC. Worth every cent!

They recovered a lot of irreplaceable material, and created backup copies for me. In fact, I asked them to create a couple of backup copies, just in case … etc, which they did.

AussieDJ said:

Kothos said:

Take out to a data recovery company. It may cost $50, it may cost a couple of thousand, depending on what’s wrong with the drive. But most of the time the data is recoverable. Just depends on what it’s worth to you.

I did that with a failed drive on my old PC. Worth every cent!

They recovered a lot of irreplaceable material, and created backup copies for me. In fact, I asked them to create a couple of backup copies, just in case … etc, which they did.

How much did that cost?

Bubblecar said:

AussieDJ said:

Kothos said:

Take out to a data recovery company. It may cost $50, it may cost a couple of thousand, depending on what’s wrong with the drive. But most of the time the data is recoverable. Just depends on what it’s worth to you.

I did that with a failed drive on my old PC. Worth every cent!

They recovered a lot of irreplaceable material, and created backup copies for me. In fact, I asked them to create a couple of backup copies, just in case … etc, which they did.

How much did that cost?

I gave the data recovery people three drives:

Two were from a much older PC, where the copy & paste function had failed, so I couldn’t get anything off them, and the third was from a much more recent box, which kept displaying BSOD, and we couldn’t even get it to start in safe mode.

The cost for the recovery of the data from the three drives and copying it to a backup drive was in the order of $1600 all up. That didn’t include the cost of the backup drives as well as the extra backup copies.

Spiny Norman said:

Perhaps try one of the Linux utils that do a good job of reading damaged HDD’s. I’m not sure what they’re called though sorry.

You could try this, I think it requires a working drive but its worth a go

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

The files are almost certainly buried in there somewhere. If the OS has been upgraded the current system may not recognise the old format.

I know I’m late to this party, but there are a couple of things you can try.

I’ve often found that a drive that no longer works on Windows will work properly on Linux, so if you’ve got a Linux system try the disk on that. If not, you can download a live distro from somewhere and boot into that (from a DVD, for example.) It won’t change the usual system, and you can get access to a full suite of data recovery tools (a useful tool in this case is ddrescue.)

Grab a copy of testdisk (and photorec from the same location.) That’ll analyse the disk and can recover (almost) all your information. It can also fix corrupted partition tables (which, from the error message you reported, is what’s happened to your disk.)

If you still can’t access your data, you might need to go to a data carving tool like foremost, a forensic data recovery tool developed by agents in the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations. That’ll recover a bunch of data by reading the raw disk, but won’t restore the original file names.

I should note that both testdisk and foremost are command-line driven (and both are open source.)

• you can download a live distro from somewhere and boot into that (from a DVD, for example.)

If you can boot from usb, I’d recommend a live usb, can be made persistent too. It’s faster than a DVD and you can get (some) additional applications outside the standard set…