Hello all, as you can see im new here. I have the folowing question. I have a 3tb WD external hard drive that is not working properly. Seems like I must of damaged the partition. So i figuered I used Active Partiton Recovery, but as I was running the program, I found out that the hard drive also fails from bad sectors. All sectors are damaged. I then said, fine. Ill download and run HDD Regenerator and have it fix all sectors. As I ran HDD R, the two following messages popped up. Master boot record is damage and disk problem seek failure. How would I go about fixing this hard drive? Can i format the drive and then try to recover the data, or is the hard drive un-fixable?
Help with external hard drive.
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mbreslin1954
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It's unclear what you're asking when you ask "How would I go about fixing this hard drive?". What do you mean by fixing? Recovering your data, or just getting it to work? You don't mention how many partitions are on the drive and what kind they are.
If the hard drive is experiencing a physical failure, then your data is probably gone and also you are probably not going to be able to fix the drive. That's what the error "disk problem seek failure" sounds like. You can download free software to check out the drive's SMART parameters and see if there's a record of it failing.
If it's just a file system problem, run a command prompt with administrator privileges and run CHKDSK.EXE /F from within the command prompt window. If the issue is a corrupt file system then this should correct those errors and make the drive usable again.
If the drive is not physically failing, you don't care about any data on it, and you just want to be able to get it back in working order, run diskmgmt.msc and delete all the partitions on the drive, then create one or more new partitions, then format it. This will of course wipe out any data on the drive.
If the hard drive is experiencing a physical failure, then your data is probably gone and also you are probably not going to be able to fix the drive. That's what the error "disk problem seek failure" sounds like. You can download free software to check out the drive's SMART parameters and see if there's a record of it failing.
If it's just a file system problem, run a command prompt with administrator privileges and run CHKDSK.EXE /F from within the command prompt window. If the issue is a corrupt file system then this should correct those errors and make the drive usable again.
If the drive is not physically failing, you don't care about any data on it, and you just want to be able to get it back in working order, run diskmgmt.msc and delete all the partitions on the drive, then create one or more new partitions, then format it. This will of course wipe out any data on the drive.
Thank you for your respond mbreslin1954. I basically want to recover all data that was stored in the hard drive. As far as the partitions, to be quite honest, im not really sure. Im assuming it was one and it was a NTFS..? The drive has no physical damage as it was never dropped. As far as me running cmd, thats would be a no can do, as the computer does not recognize the hard drive. It is listed on disk management however..
mbreslin1954
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OK, it sounds like it's failing. Try this S.M.A.R.T. hard disk monitoring software, I've used it in the past and it's worked well. It will display any fault data collected by the hard drive's circuit board monitoring. If it is failing then this should tell you. If so, then you will probably have to go to a repair shop to get your data off.
http://www.disk-monitor.com/download.html
http://www.disk-monitor.com/download.html
mbreslin1954
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First off, you want to click on the "SMART Info" tab at the bottom left, which will give you the SMART monitoring parameters.
However, you failed to mention that you're talking about an external hard drive. It connects via USB, not a SATA port. The monitoring software does not support it. I doubt you can get SMART information from an external USB drive.
The drive is most likely broken.
I have some advice for you:
1) Hard drives have moving parts and can break at any time. Every hard drive WILL break, it's only a question of when.
2) Always have two copies of any important data stored on a hard drive. The original data and a backup. That way when one breaks (and it will), you have another copy. The odds of two drives breaking at the same time are infinitesimal.
It sounds like you stored important data in only one place, your external hard drive, with no backup. Bad move. Now your hard drive is broken and most likely your data is gone. Sorry.
However, you failed to mention that you're talking about an external hard drive. It connects via USB, not a SATA port. The monitoring software does not support it. I doubt you can get SMART information from an external USB drive.
The drive is most likely broken.
I have some advice for you:
1) Hard drives have moving parts and can break at any time. Every hard drive WILL break, it's only a question of when.
2) Always have two copies of any important data stored on a hard drive. The original data and a backup. That way when one breaks (and it will), you have another copy. The odds of two drives breaking at the same time are infinitesimal.
It sounds like you stored important data in only one place, your external hard drive, with no backup. Bad move. Now your hard drive is broken and most likely your data is gone. Sorry.
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