Ext. HDD, MBR damaged, Sectors unreadable, icon shows.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
k9_Kashish

k9_Kashish

Reputable
Mar 8, 2015
2
0
4,510
Hey awesome people!

Well, My HGST external HDD suddenly stopped working(Just the drive icon shows). Its just been an year since I purchased it, HGST offers replacement but I want to get my data off the drive(3-4gb of family pictures).
No software could fix it. I've tried the following-

    Chkdsk says its RAW.
    Drive fitness tool- Doesn't find the drive or hangs.
    Test disk- at first found some partitions, its deeper search found even more but as soon as it found a few files, it stopped. I ran the tests agains and it found "Read error at every point". Now it does not find any partitions.
    Photorec-Couldnt find anything. Error at sectors and stuff.
    GetDataBack- It found a few files in the NTFS version(none in fat32), but none of the found partitions had any relevant data. It told me that it found no NTFS system then.
    HDDregenerator says that the MBR table is damaged or missing. Asks me to plug my external HDD as internal(shouldnt do that, because of warranty and stuff).
    SpinRite- it processed every sector when I ran it on level-2 scan for 27 hours straight, but did not reported back anything as repaired in the graphical analysis and nor gave any report back. Just processed all the sectors.



I am running win 8.1, 64bit.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
chesteracorgi

chesteracorgi

Distinguished
Apr 11, 2011
1,956
0
20,460
There are some sophisticated tools and service providers who may be able to help you recover, but they cost a bit. I can tell you that if your MBR (Master Boot Record) has been corrupted then you will have issues restoring any of the data. I don't know any rock solid solutions to your problem and can only say that you will probably need a HDD professional service to restore your data, and that it may be costly.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
Hi there k9_Kashish,

Have you tried something simple as just using another cable? Attaching the drive to another system will not hurt as well.
If the issue persist though, I would say that you have three options:
1- After you have tried several data recovery tools and none worked, I would say that your safest bet of recovering the data is to contact a professional data recovery company.
2 - Take the drive out of the enclosure and connect it through SATA. This will void the warranty. Though, if the issue is enclosure related, you may be able to retrieve the data.
3 - Just RMA the drive.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
k9_Kashish

k9_Kashish

Reputable
Mar 8, 2015
2
0
4,510


Hey, there are no 'data recovery experts' or 'HDD experts' where I live. So I have to do all of this without voiding the warranty.
How about if write the MBR code(of testdisk utility) in my HDD with the help of testdisk.?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom