External Hard drive-Raw

[spirosronto]

I am using external drives for gaming as i have a small main drive with 80gb and finally decided to make some videos,i take my 2nd drive and plug it in,install fraps and launching the game(cs:go)and made a video of 5 minutes,after closing down the game all system froze and i had to unplug the driver to get it to work,i plug it again and i have no files.then i re-try and it shows it correctly but can't use any of the files or watch the video so when i restarted it said that i needed to be formatted and it was also changed to RAW file system so i couldn't get it to work at all.

(TestDisk doesn't work at all ,when i press quick search driver freezes again)

it's a Hitachi external drive with 250gb of storage..if you can help me please post here and also ask me for more information if you want something

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Spiros,

When data is listed as "RAW", that means the media is Unformatted. Must have become corrupted with the video development.

You have tried a Partition recovery applet, which was unsucessful.
You need to use a Data Recovery Program to retrieve the files still present on the disk.

The EaseUS Data Recovery Program is very good, and in the instruction manual it talks about recovering RAW data. Here is the URL:

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm

Another good applet is TenorShare Data Recovery

Essentially all the data recovery programs let you recover 1GB of data, then you need to purchase the program, unfortunately, to recover more.

 

[spirosronto]

can i make drive usable again cause it was actually empty...only file was fraps

 

[rgd1101]

If you don't need the data, just format it again. then do a disk check.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi again,

Yes, to set it back to the factory settings, it's a little techy but easy. Just double each step.

Connect it to your computer.
Click on Start, then Accessories, then right click on CMD (runas administrator). Should have the CMD> prompt.

type "Diskpart"
Diskpart> then type List Disk
(make sure you choose the Disk for this Hitachi drive. It will probably Disk 1, but double check
then type Select Disk n (this is the Disk1 or whatever it is)
Diskpart> thentype Clean All

That will clear all the formatting and partitioning info from the drive and write 0's to all hardware sectors.

Exit back to the cmd.

Reboot the system, and go to Disk Management. The Hitachi drive should be listed there and say "Initialize". Do that.
Choose a Basic Disk, choose an MBR Partition style, and format it with NTFS, default allocation unit size. May take a while.
Then it should be ready to use.

 

[spirosronto]

it now says that it has somekind of protection and i can't enable it

 

[spirosronto]

ok i managed to do every step you gave me but seems like drive has some other problem,i doesn't do the clean all command and green light goes to red and stops working

 

[John_VanKirk]

Please be specific as to what the message is regarding Protection. Did it possibly say Disk is Read Only, or Write Protected? Also, I'm not aware of any green or red light using the Cmd prompt or DiskPart utility. More info as to what you mean would be helpful.

Try the same steps, but instead of DiskPart> Clean All, type Clean. See if that will work. Be absolutely sure you are choosing the Hitachi Drive and not the boot or system drive.

 

[spirosronto]

there is something wrong with the driver actually...once it works and other times it just doesn't...i opened the hard drive just to see from curiosity if something's wrong and put it back in,after that it worked and followed your advice and now i can record and play again...thanks alot

 

[John_VanKirk]

there is something wrong with the driver actually...once it works and other times it just doesn't...i opened the hard drive just to see from curiosity if something's wrong and put it back in,after that it worked and followed your advice and now i can record and play again...thanks alot

You're Welcome!

Were you able to get it back to "factory new" settings?

Possibly there was some oxidation on one of the bridge contacts within the case that made better contact on opening it.

Now that it is functionng, download and install HD Tune (Pro) on your C drive, and run the Health Tab SMART tests, the Benchmark Tab test, and the Error Tab analysis. That will tell you if there is anything wrong with the drive in preparation for continued use.

 

[spirosronto]

i think it is a problem in the inside of the drive and not the data part.
i will try to find a solution to it because after that i think it will work normally
will also check that program and try to find a different solution..if i do,anyways thanks a lot for the help!