Hard drive RAW : how I can ave my data ?

[Delzaron]

Hi

 

I have a major problem : my save hard drive is damaged, and the disk lost his NTFS partition. It now says it's RAW.

 

chkdsk doesn't work, ease recover data either...

I managed to save some data, but some importants documents, and all my games archives, are still unrecovered.

It means maybe 1To of data in danger...

 

How I could save it ?

 

thx in advance

[mircislav]

Boot with some repair utility (plenty of those on the net, like Hiren's), fix the drive and buy new one to copy the data while still you can.

With WinPE you can also copy the data to other drive.

And never, ever use Windows update, turn it off.

Edited November 1, 2022 by mircislav

[Guest]

First unplug this drive and use another drive as main drive (probably you already did it.)

Then there are some tools that can scan the blocks of the drive to try to recover the data from. But only if the data is then save on another drive.

back in the day I used "O&O MediaRecovery" to recover a failed drive, and I was able to save a good amount of files from it.

It has a test option (free) that limits the amount of files you can recover.

It is OK to check it to see if you can actually save something.

In case you can save you may decide to buy the full version.

 

Check also for free tools for it.

[t.ara]

At first I´d create a copy by using clonezilla let a boot-part. to become written before you start the process...and do not mismatch the drives !

 

And then I would recommend G-Parted which can give you an correct overview of the drive´s content....and which can be used for drive-to-drive-structure-copies.

 

The original DRIVE I would not let to be touched, until you get again a working copy again.

Windows based stuff is mostly lacking "here" and there"-lot of promisses which do not work in the end after wasting hours by hours reading instructions and not getting forward.

Possible and I think this may be enough, that CLONEZILLA all alone can offer again the drive to become bootable. So check that copy for a boot, before you start with G-PARTED.

 

Clonezilla and G_Parted (LINUX) have their OWN O.S. on board and boot from usb-stick or from an old-school cd-drive, if available.

 

 

https://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/02_Restore_disk_image

 

(anyway: I would still make a mirror-copy from DEVICE TO DEVICE and let the BOOTABLE SECTOR to become written on the target disk/ssd)

 

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by t.ara

[Delzaron]

I'm trying to use testdisk.

 

It don't seems able to read the hard drive.

I can't clone it : it's wau bigger than the other drives I currently possess. Maybe I'll buy a new one tomorrow (it's free day today in france, all shops are closed).

 

I tried several data recovery softwares... only diskgenius suceeded to find my data, but i canceled when the payment was called...

[t.ara]

19 hours ago, Delzaron said:

I'm trying to use testdisk.

 

It don't seems able to read the hard drive.

I can't clone it : it's wau bigger than the other drives I currently possess. Maybe I'll buy a new one tomorrow (it's free day today in france, all shops are closed).

 

I tried several data recovery softwares... only diskgenius suceeded to find my data, but i canceled when the payment was called...

yes, make a copy of it....then you can experiment and do what you think is working....

[Imperfection]

If you use clonzilla to copy the bad drive, enter expert mode and choose the "-rescue" option otherwise it will stop cloning when bad sector reached. Depending on size of drive and amount of damage it could take 15-20 hours to complete (1TB drive) based on my experience. I have been able to recover data that way, but as t.ara said it's better to work on backup copy in case you want to try multiple recovery softwares or later send to data recovery service which is expensive.

[Delzaron]

argh...

 

9 hours ago, Imperfection said:

If you use clonzilla to copy the bad drive, enter expert mode and choose the "-rescue" option otherwise it will stop cloning when bad sector reached. Depending on size of drive and amount of damage it could take 15-20 hours to complete (1TB drive) based on my experience. I have been able to recover data that way, but as t.ara said it's better to work on backup copy in case you want to try multiple recovery softwares or later send to data recovery service which is expensive.

 

Argh...

 

At least I saved the most importants documents, and 240 gb of my data. But all my games are lost.

The disk is physisally damaged, none program I used are able to reach the data, even after I restored the partition.

[t.ara]

At least it´s not bad to share the massive work we all made with creations-it keeps it alive. But that´s of course only a very small aspect.

Windows 10, I guess?

Friend of mine got windows 10 with such a quick ssd, on board...some weeks ago windows 10 did not boot any longer, the drive got damaged. Win 10 is very sensitive and it´s recovering functions lack...never have got a damaged win10 system back to boot successfully on my computer(s). I hate it, I also hate the graphical handling and the smart-nonsence as well-it´s  not a serious o.s. for a professional workstation. Same is happening in between with mac-os-systems.

In between I have more than two ssd s from SAMSUNG, the expensive ones, 2TB of data, each, which have damaged sectors and which became lacking beside others, which have been cheap and fine working. SAMSUNG, I can not trust any longer.

I always create for minimum two backup-drives to avoid problems. If working professional, you need create MORE of that: 2/3 for the os and 2/3 for data.

Games are no problem, only problem is the endless stuff of 3d-meshes and templates (working-default-files, which allow to not start always from ZERO), nif-files and lot of stuff, which I have simply created during the years. Such a setup for skyrim-modding is a very workintensive installation, in between.

Edited November 4, 2022 by t.ara

[Delzaron]

On 11/4/2022 at 12:44 PM, t.ara said:

At least it´s not bad to share the massive work we all made with creations-it keeps it alive. But that´s of course only a very small aspect.

Windows 10, I guess?

Friend of mine got windows 10 with such a quick ssd, on board...some weeks ago windows 10 did not boot any longer, the drive got damaged. Win 10 is very sensitive and it´s recovering functions lack...never have got a damaged win10 system back to boot successfully on my computer(s). I hate it, I also hate the graphical handling and the smart-nonsence as well-it´s  not a serious o.s. for a professional workstation. Same is happening in between with mac-os-systems.

In between I have more than two ssd s from SAMSUNG, the expensive ones, 2TB of data, each, which have damaged sectors and which became lacking beside others, which have been cheap and fine working. SAMSUNG, I can not trust any longer.

I always create for minimum two backup-drives to avoid problems. If working professional, you need create MORE of that: 2/3 for the os and 2/3 for data.

Games are no problem, only problem is the endless stuff of 3d-meshes and templates (working-default-files, which allow to not start always from ZERO), nif-files and lot of stuff, which I have simply created during the years. Such a setup for skyrim-modding is a very workintensive installation, in between.

 

yep win10.

I'll download the mods... and I need to redownload all the skyrim stuff...

[t.ara]

So let ´s hope you can recover your stuff without becoming depressive/sad/demotivated...