Dead Drive: How to bypass bad sectors?
Last response: in Storage
I have a fairly new WD external HDD that bit the dust while I was writing a few video files to it the other day. The writing was on the wall as the drive would randomly disconnect from the computer for no reason and needed to be power cycled to return.
Chkdsk wouldn't work on the drive. I'm using EaseUS Partition Master to test the drive now, it's only 25% done yet it has already detected 44270 bad sectors. Is there any way to isolate and avoid these bad sectors just to access the drive once more and salvage whatever is on it? I'd like to do this before I RMA.
The drive was used mainly as a backup, but there are some unique files I need to pull off. I used Photorec to recover some of the files, but the problem is nothing is named and it will take weeks to sort through to figure out what is a backup and what is an original. It took about 5 hours to complete that, and that wasn't even the entire drive. It's a 3TB so if I recovered the entire drive, the estimated time of completion was 150 hours and increasing.
TL;DR I don't care about the corrupt files on the bad sectors, what's gone is gone. I just want to be able to access the drive and selectively copy off the small percentage of files I need. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Chkdsk wouldn't work on the drive. I'm using EaseUS Partition Master to test the drive now, it's only 25% done yet it has already detected 44270 bad sectors. Is there any way to isolate and avoid these bad sectors just to access the drive once more and salvage whatever is on it? I'd like to do this before I RMA.
The drive was used mainly as a backup, but there are some unique files I need to pull off. I used Photorec to recover some of the files, but the problem is nothing is named and it will take weeks to sort through to figure out what is a backup and what is an original. It took about 5 hours to complete that, and that wasn't even the entire drive. It's a 3TB so if I recovered the entire drive, the estimated time of completion was 150 hours and increasing.
TL;DR I don't care about the corrupt files on the bad sectors, what's gone is gone. I just want to be able to access the drive and selectively copy off the small percentage of files I need. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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The drive will automatically assign new sectors and the count is reported in SMART data. The sectors failing shoudl be clusters, and file systems try to cluster file data to improve read times. There is a chance you can get data.
Download WD's tool from their support page. Have it do a surface scan (or whatever they call it in the tool). Then look at the smart data to see how many sectors you lost.
These are typically 512 byte sectors (although maybe advanced format drive with 4K sectors). 512 bytes times 44K failed sectors (so far) = 22MB of bad data. 22MB of failed is huge, but not as a percent of the drive.
Download WD's tool from their support page. Have it do a surface scan (or whatever they call it in the tool). Then look at the smart data to see how many sectors you lost.
These are typically 512 byte sectors (although maybe advanced format drive with 4K sectors). 512 bytes times 44K failed sectors (so far) = 22MB of bad data. 22MB of failed is huge, but not as a percent of the drive.
TestDisk, Data RecoveryTestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.
TestDisk Step By Step to recover lost partitions and repair damaged FAT/NTFS boot sector
Recover deleted files from NTFS partition
NOTE If seeked lost file are still missing, give PhotoRec a try. PhotoRec is a signature based file recovery utility and may be able to recover your data where other methods failed.
PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, and lost pictures (thus the Photo Recovery name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the file system and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's file system has been severely damaged or reformatted.
Try the tool PBD(Partition Bad Disk) which can bypass bad sectors and create healthy partitions.
Chkdsk wouldn't work on the drive. I'm using EaseUS Partition Master to test the drive now, it's only 25% done yet it has already detected 44270 bad sectors. Is there any way to isolate and avoid these bad sectors just to access the drive once more and salvage whatever is on it? I'd like to do this before I RMA.
The drive was used mainly as a backup, but there are some unique files I need to pull off. I used Photorec to recover some of the files, but the problem is nothing is named and it will take weeks to sort through to figure out what is a backup and what is an original. It took about 5 hours to complete that, and that wasn't even the entire drive. It's a 3TB so if I recovered the entire drive, the estimated time of completion was 150 hours and increasing.
TL;DR I don't care about the corrupt files on the bad sectors, what's gone is gone. I just want to be able to access the drive and selectively copy off the small percentage of files I need. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
dedbeats said:
I have a fairly new WD external HDD that bit the dust while I was writing a few video files to it the other day. The writing was on the wall as the drive would randomly disconnect from the computer for no reason and needed to be power cycled to return.Chkdsk wouldn't work on the drive. I'm using EaseUS Partition Master to test the drive now, it's only 25% done yet it has already detected 44270 bad sectors. Is there any way to isolate and avoid these bad sectors just to access the drive once more and salvage whatever is on it? I'd like to do this before I RMA.
The drive was used mainly as a backup, but there are some unique files I need to pull off. I used Photorec to recover some of the files, but the problem is nothing is named and it will take weeks to sort through to figure out what is a backup and what is an original. It took about 5 hours to complete that, and that wasn't even the entire drive. It's a 3TB so if I recovered the entire drive, the estimated time of completion was 150 hours and increasing.
TL;DR I don't care about the corrupt files on the bad sectors, what's gone is gone. I just want to be able to access the drive and selectively copy off the small percentage of files I need. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Clone your drive sector-by-sector using a tool that knows how to work around bad sectors, and then use data recovery software on the clone.
A good freeware cloning tool is ddrescue:
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html
Ddrescue can perform multipass cloning. It clones the easy sectors on the first pass, and attempts the more difficult ones on subsequent passes. It can also clone your drive in reverse, thereby disabling lookahead caching. It keeps a log, allowing it to resume after an interruption.
The following thread discusses various freeware and commercial cloning tools:
http://forum.hddguru.com/the-best-disk-cloning-hardware...
A good freeware cloning tool is ddrescue:
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html
Ddrescue can perform multipass cloning. It clones the easy sectors on the first pass, and attempts the more difficult ones on subsequent passes. It can also clone your drive in reverse, thereby disabling lookahead caching. It keeps a log, allowing it to resume after an interruption.
The following thread discusses various freeware and commercial cloning tools:
http://forum.hddguru.com/the-best-disk-cloning-hardware...
Quote:
Seems that everyone is more interested in data recovery than prevention of further data writing on this bad sectors… Anybody knows any program that MARKS bad sectors and prevents system from putting file on this location?I'm gonna point out two very SMART programs for you and others interested that such things along with a grip of other wonderfully useful/helpful things..
1st one --- HD Tune Pro 5.00 (less then 10mb in total size & easy to use from a USB flash or other source)
HDTune.com retails $35us or $00.00 from PB or a friend emailing it
2nd one --- StableBit Scanner the gold standard in this sort field.. And other then mailing a HHD off to company to fix/recover for like $200 this program has the best chance of recovering files,and the bad sectors they are in.. And everything else you could think of (It just doesn't give reach arounds or windows sills)
StableBit.com/Scanner Has a 30day free trial, and costs a totally worth it price of $24.95
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