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Recover Data from inaccessible external hard drive

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  • Western Digital
  • Storage
  • External Hard Drive
Last response: in Storage
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October 8, 2014 3:23:04 PM

Hi, All!

I have a Western Digital 2TB external hard drive (WD Elements WDBAAU0020HBK) that I partitioned into three partitions (F: G: H:) . (I'm not sure, but I may have originally partitioned this drive using Acronis Disk Director instead of Windows.) Anyway, I hope I can correctly remember the sequence of events, so here goes...

The other day, I was copying a large video file from the C: drive onto the G: partition. The file transfer seemed to be taking an unusually long amount of time, so I clicked cancel. I tried again a little while later, but received a "Data Error: Cyclic Redundancy Check" error message.

I decided to run CHKDSK from a command line with the /R and /F options. It detected the file system as being NTFS and listed the correct volume label. It found a certain number of "unreadable" spots, but then seemed to complete its scan with the message "Stage 2 of 5 completed." It never moved on to the other "stages".

I went to the Western Digital site and downloaded their Data Lifeguard Diagnostics software. It detected the drive and its three partitions, but when I ran the Quick Test, it gave me the following message:

"Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete!
Status code = 02 (Interrupted by hard or soft reset), Failure Checkpoint = 106 (Unknown Test)
SMART self-test did not complete on drive 2!"

The external drive and all three partitions show up under Windows Disk Management. The status for each says "healthy" and the correct "used" and "available" partition sizes are listed. The weird thing is, for "File System" it now says RAW... and I'm pretty sure I originally partitioned them as NTFS and CHKDSK identified them as being NTFS.

Now, when I try to access any of the partitions I get the following error message:

"F:\ is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

I've tried the drive in another computer, but I am still unable to access any data (and there's lots!)

I know there are programs out there (like Recuva, Puran File Recovery, etc.) that can recover accidentally deleted files, but I didn't accidentally delete the data on this drive. So, it doesn't seem to be the same situation. Besides, I'm a little afraid to use them. (Many data recovery companies say doing so can actually make the problem worse and/or damage the drive itself.)

So... does anyone know what I should do to access the files?

Thanks in advance for your help!! :-)

More about : recover data inaccessible external hard drive

a b G Storage
October 8, 2014 11:50:57 PM

Hi there susanrs,

I am going to start with that your safest bet of recovering your data it to contact a data recovery company. You could also try recovering the data by yourself, though it is true that the data may get more damaged. AS your drive show as RAW,most probably the file system have been lost.

There are quite a lot of threads on the forum on data recovery. You can read through them and decide it yourself. Just keep not to write anything on the drive because you will overwrite the data. Save the recovered files on another hard.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/280932-32-hard-driv...
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282351-32-file-syst...
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-dat...

WD's Data Recovery Partners: http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.asp?lang=en

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD
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October 9, 2014 1:34:24 PM

Thanks for the reply, Western Digital representative. Unfortunately, I can't afford to hire a data recovery company. I posted in this forum in the hopes I could find some help in recovering it myself.

Interestingly, when I turned on the computer this morning, Disk Management listed all three partitions as being "healthy" NTFS file systems.

When I tried to access them via Windows Explorer, I received a "F:\ is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error." error message.

Then, a return check to Disk Management showed the G: partition as suddenly being RAW again.

So... it seems something crazy is going on here. I am stumped, and none of the numerous threads here regarding data recovery seem to address my particular crazy situation.
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a b G Storage
October 9, 2014 11:22:44 PM

What recovery software have you tried? Have you checked out the tools in the threads I provided?
After it shows your HDD as RAW, then there is something wrong with the file system. I would advice you to look for some kind of RAW partition recovery software since I can not really recommend you one.


Here is another thread on the same issue:http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/278914-32-recover-d...

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD
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October 10, 2014 3:07:03 PM

D_Know_WD said:
What recovery software have you tried? Have you checked out the tools in the threads I provided?
After it shows your HDD as RAW, then there is something wrong with the file system. I would advice you to look for some kind of RAW partition recovery software since I can not really recommend you one.


Here is another thread on the same issue:http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/278914-32-recover-d...

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD


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October 10, 2014 3:12:31 PM

Hi again, D -

The very strange thing is this... when I booted the computer the next day, and went into Disk Management, Windows showed all three partitions (one primary, two extended) as being "healthy" NTFS partitions. I still couldn't access anything via Windows Explorer (instead, I got a message that the drive is inaccessible due to an I/O device problem).

So now I'm running TestDisk. I'm recovering about 95 percent of the files and saving them to my internal drive. I suspect I'm gonna have to try and rebuilt the partition table... but hopefully TestDisk will help with that.
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a b G Storage
October 13, 2014 1:56:01 AM

After you recover as much as possible, I would suggest you to run the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool and check the HDD's health. This might show you bad sectors or whether there is something wrong with the drive.

DLG tool: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810...

Glad you were able to recover most of your data,
D_Know_WD
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!