External HDD Recovery from "Corrupted and Unreadable"

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RelentlessGrit

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Jan 18, 2014
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Recently, my External 3TB Seagate HDD powered down for some unknown reason while I was away from my computer. When I returned I powered it back on, it shut down again instantaneously. After unplugging the power source and reinserting, it powered on and connected but now was inaccessible and read as "Corrupted and Unreadable" from window's explorer. I did some digging around on the web and tried the following:


    1) Running checkdisk: Failed - Unable to access drive
    2) Running chkdsk from cmd as admin: Aborted - Unable to determine volume version and state
    3) Ran recovery software - Scanned drive: Resulted as 100% good (no bad sectors/files/etc.)
    4) Ran Recovery software - Recover files: All files intact and capable of recovery


My problem: This is about 2TB of data which I do not have any other storage device with nearly enough (even combined) space to recover to. What are my options? Windows wants me to format the drive in order to use it again, can I format and then recover the files from the same drive? Any help appreciated.
 
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To answer your first question, if the drive does not power on in the Windows 8 system then it is toast. Probably the circuit board attached to the drive, that interfaces to the drive, has failed, but in either case it has nothing to do with Windows 8. It should be readable in any system running Windows XP on up to Windows 8.

There are two possibilities to what failed on the drive: 1) the circuit board interface which controls the drive, or 2) the actual mechanics of the drive have failed (e.g., head crash, bearings failed, etc.).

You can recover from #1 above by taking it to a repair shop and they'll replace the circuit board with exactly the same interface board (rev. number and firmware must match exactly), but it will cost over...
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RandomTox

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Jan 27, 2013
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I'd try to put it in another system and recover all files you need to the other system (a friends pc maybe?) and go to the store where you bought it for RMA. I wouldn't do a format. You'll destroy all the data on that disk. To get that back will be very difficult if not impossible.
 
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mbreslin1954

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Nov 27, 2010
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This should be a reminder to you that ALL hard drives WILL fail. Period. Never have important data on only one hard drive, because eventually it WILL fail and you'll lose it. You should have had a backup of this data.

I have a 3 TB HDD on which I store all my familly's data on our home server. I have an identical 3 TB HDD onto which I make nightly incremental backups to. Not that you need to do this, but my point is this: Whatever drive you use to store important data to, you MUST have at least as large a drive for making backups to. Maybe not every day, maybe only once a week or once a month, depending on how often your data changes, but you must have a backup.

You need to store your data to two drives: A main drive you use primarily, and a backup copy of that drive. Because the primary drive will eventually fail. They all do if you use them long enough (even sometimes when you don't use them very long they still fail).

P.S. RandomTox has a good idea, but even with his solution you're going to need somewhere to store all that data if you can indeed read it from a friend's PC. I don't see a way around you needing to get another 2 TB drive right away in order to save your data to it, so you can RMA your original drive, or format it and keep it.
 
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RelentlessGrit

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Alright, really strange: the drive does not power on when plugged into another system. I'm not sure if the reason is that the original system is windows 7 and the other system I tried was windows 8...? That's the only other system I have immediate access to. I've ordered another hard drive which should arrive in the next week. Hopefully it will still work.

I understand the importance of backups, and I goofed up here obviously! I used the now corrupted drive to make backups of my OS drive... I've ordered a secondary hard drive to backup between. While on the subject, is using the windows backup utility efficient or is there better backup software out there?

On a side note, is recovering the files to another drive my only option? Would it be possible to make the drive readable again?

Sorry about all the questions, but just want to get this all figured out.

 
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mbreslin1954

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Nov 27, 2010
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To answer your first question, if the drive does not power on in the Windows 8 system then it is toast. Probably the circuit board attached to the drive, that interfaces to the drive, has failed, but in either case it has nothing to do with Windows 8. It should be readable in any system running Windows XP on up to Windows 8.

There are two possibilities to what failed on the drive: 1) the circuit board interface which controls the drive, or 2) the actual mechanics of the drive have failed (e.g., head crash, bearings failed, etc.).

You can recover from #1 above by taking it to a repair shop and they'll replace the circuit board with exactly the same interface board (rev. number and firmware must match exactly), but it will cost over $100 U.S. (in my experience). A failure of the mechanical parts might be overcome if the heads haven't crashed into the drive platters and ruined too much data, but that kind of recovery costs upwards of $1,000 U.S.

That's my experience with recovering data for a couple of people/companies. Usually not worth the effort. There is little you can do yourself if the drive won't power up.
 
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