My external Hitachi 3.5 inch HDD suddenly needs formatting - I don't want to lose 500GB of data by formatting it!

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thefielding

Commendable
Mar 17, 2016
2
0
1,510
My Hitachi 3.5 HDD (External) has suddenly become inaccessible as I get the Disk G needs formatting pop up - I have tried running the chkdsk in Command prompt but that just took ages with no resolution as most of the files were apparently unreadable- Is the HDD itself totally done in? Or is there a way I can access the disk to get out all the data on it and back it up on another drive?

The disk itself keeps making unhealthy clicking noises which makes me think the heads are buggered, and i'm not really confident in taking the HHD apart to get at the disk itself, in any case my house is really dusty !!

Is there a software that works on corrupted disks? Or a tutorial on how to mend a corrupted disk without swear words?
 
Solution
SuperSoph_WD
Welcome to the community, thefielding!

Unfortunately, if the clicking noises are present you are most probably dealing with an internal hardware failure. :( Sadly, this is not something you can fix by yourself and your best bet at getting your files back is a professional data recovery company. I'd not recommend you to attempt the data recovery by yourself because it could potentially do more harm than good. (e.g. Chkdsk)
You can still test the HDD using @Hamperking68's suggestion because it will help you determine the health and SMART status of the hard drive.

In the future, I'd advise you to keep at least two copies of your data stored in different locations and avoid similar data-loss headaches.

Hope this was helpful. Keep us...
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

Glorious
Jul 30, 2014
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Welcome to the community, thefielding!

Unfortunately, if the clicking noises are present you are most probably dealing with an internal hardware failure. :( Sadly, this is not something you can fix by yourself and your best bet at getting your files back is a professional data recovery company. I'd not recommend you to attempt the data recovery by yourself because it could potentially do more harm than good. (e.g. Chkdsk)
You can still test the HDD using @Hamperking68's suggestion because it will help you determine the health and SMART status of the hard drive.

In the future, I'd advise you to keep at least two copies of your data stored in different locations and avoid similar data-loss headaches.

Hope this was helpful. Keep us posted.
SuperSoph_WD
 
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Solution
T

thefielding

Commendable
Mar 17, 2016
2
0
1,510
I tried hitting it (Bad idea), warming it up on the radiator, changingn the USB leads, CHKDSK and all the time it kept making the 'click of death' sound - My (Windows 7) PC only read it as RAW, so I finally bit the bullet and followed someone's advice on Tom's Hardware and installed EaseUS Data recovery - it took 36(!) Hours to read the corrupted hard disk, then another 22 hours to recover the data, BUT I GOT IT BACK!!!! (Well, about 95% of the data - I think the drive is fornicated but I am thankful to those on Tom's who reccommended EaseUS... I wish I could remember who it was!!
 
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