Put me out of my misery

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Soldato
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27 Jun 2006
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Hey all,

I've come to the edge. I've spent all day trying to sort this problem, searching forum after forum, page after page and trying what feels like, application after application and I am sick to my teeth of it. So this is the last ditch attempt.

I have an external hard drive which I want to get data from. And this is what happened:

  • Plugged disk into my MacBook Pro with a SATA to USB connection
  • Drive connected on OS X and I was browsing the files on the drive
  • Went to copy the files over onto my new external and boom, it unmounts
  • Try again, no luck, so decide to install Windows Vista
  • Vista is detecting the drive and its partitions (2) in Computer Management
  • In (My) 'Computer' I can access the drives (it's not asking me to format) but there are no files/folders.
  • Additionally, the drive and its partitions are now in RAW file format, which I assume are a result of the unmounting in OS X.

What I wish to know is, is there any way I can access/retrieve my data?

I've tried a few recovery programs but they're not liking the RAW file format. Either that or they're simply not working.

As I said, I've spent most of today, nearly 12 hours on this and I've got absolutely nowhere. I need some help. :o

Obviously can't use a floppy drive method etc but anything else I'm willing to try.

Thanks.
 
Hiya,

I take it there was a lot of data on this drive? - and mechanically, the drive is still sound? - ie, no sounds of clicking, whirring etc?

What was the 'format' of the disk before it went to raw?

You mention you hooked it up to your Macbook, so i'm guessing HFS Plus ???

My knowledge on Mac's can be written on the back of a postage stamp, but chances are, what has happened is that the 'table of contents' of the partition, has been corrupt in some way, thus making it appear 'RAW' and 'blank' - does Vista support HFS Plus :confused:

Which 'recovery' programs have you tried?
 
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Hi,

There's a fair bit of data on it, yeah. It's split into two partitions, the first is around 240GB and the latter is around 30GB. The 30GB drive is just an old XP installation so it's not vital, but the 240GB has some important stuff on it.

Nothing 'life-or-death' but a lot of media that I've gathered over the years (pictures, music, movies and so on). And I'd prefer to try and get it rather than just format the thing.

The format it was in, was NTFS. My thinking was that OS X would happily read the NTFS drive (just not write to it) but I think when it dis-mounted for whatever reason, it also has corrupted the drive along with it - thus leaving with me with the 'RAW' and blankness you mention.

That might be the wrong thing to have done but I was browsing the contents of the drive happily for a few minutes and it only then crashed when trying to transfer it over onto my new drive, which is HFS Plus.

I've tried a few programs, things like TestDisk, Zero Assumption Recovery and File Scavenger. But none have got as far as accessing the disk, just recognizing it.

With ZAR, I can get as far as attempting to reload the partition tables or something similar - but it's stumping me when I get to step 4 of this Tutorial

It's giving me no volume to select, at the previous step it is showing all of my physical devices and I can select them no problem - but when it comes to that volume select, nothing is showing up. So it then says there is no partition table found (I think) and asks me to put it both the offset size and size of the volume.

No matter what I enter for offset - it gives me back an error saying the offset is not on the physical disk or something similar - so I can't get beyond there. Not particularly hooked on that software by any means - but it's as far as I've got with anything I've tried so that's why I've sort of blabbered on about it.

As for the disk, it is perfectly fine. No bad sectors and I don't even think it's a year old - Western Digital too so not really sure what's going on.

I've tried the likes of CHKDSK repair but it doesn't want to do anything because it's in a RAW state.

After hunting around the net for similar problems, I have seen people recommending to download Knoppix and run it (as it apparently reads NTFS, RAW and everything basically) but it's a 4GB file (don't think a Live CD would work for USB devices etc) and not that easy to install on a MacBook Pro from my previous attempts. It's an option though.
 
Best program I can think of is Get Data Back for NTFS

I've used it before on a drive that had lost it's MFT, and it recovered the drive. Trouble is that it's only a trial version, but at least you get to see if the trial would work, I think you can just view your files, the full version (which imho) is quite cheap obviously doesn't have that limitation. Works on a reg key idea.

At least you'll be able to see if it can recover your data.

Failing that, you could try the Knoppix boot cd like you suggested earlier.

I doubt that amount of data would just 'vanish' or all of it to become corrupt
 
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Cheers for the suggestions, as mentioned I've used File Scavenger and it doesn't find anything.

GetDataBack scans the hard drive but all I'm getting is error after error:

capture2qo2.jpg

http://img455.imageshack.us/img455/5072/capture2qo2.jpg

Then after that completes, it brings me to step 2 where I'm supposed to pick a 'file storage format' that it has found - but it has none. Not even under 'show all'

capturegc0.jpg

http://img455.imageshack.us/img455/1238/capturegc0.jpg

*not sure if those images are showing up or not

Seems like it might be forked?
 
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Did you set up FS correctly as I cant believe that if drive is indeed recoverable, I demo'd them all and that was only 1 to work so I had to pay to use it.

Do not choose Quick/Fast option, DO inc Deleted Files.

EDIT: see pics above of FS.
 
Looks like your buggered, I only did it from XP temp installed to a spare SATA HDD to read back the bad HDD that was XP + all data, as you know you need to recover to a 2nd HDD.
 
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It doesn't look good, does it.

I wonder if I give it a pansy format and try to recover that would it do anything?

Probably stupidly, I still believe the data is right there. Just that the OS doesn't know how to read the disk given its format. Maybe that's just corruption....
 
Yip, sounds bad, It is same as mines as in appearing as RAW and all it wanted to do when I clicked on it was "this drive is not formated, do you want to format now", but I was on Internal SATA HDD's not same set up as you are on.
 
My (not so) trusty old ide c:/ drive just failed also, thanks for the link to testdisk! Booted up the other day and all I got was the non system bootdisk error, so I swapped some leads around installed XP on my second hd. The borked hd has been assigned a letter but the size columns are blank.

Haven't tried the others yet, all I really wanted was my precious (firefox bookmarks) and for some silly reason I didn't have those backed up! Probably the easiest thing to back up :rolleyes:

It was interesting looking through the structure though, everything in program files directory have vanished but everything else was still there and recoverable. Looking foward to finally upgrading to a SATA, which arrives today.

Will have a play around with the other recovery programs to see if I can find the 2 beta mmo's I was playing Warhammer and PotBS to save my the time of redownloading them.
 
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That ReadLogicalLBA error is I think a fairly lowlevel one, suggesting physical problems reading. As it seems to be virtually every 4th block without fail, I'd be tempted to conclude major physical problems, e.g. one of the (maybe 4?) heads having crashed into the disk or whatever. If so, the only chance you have is a specialist recovery shop, which ain't gonna be cheap.
 
If the drive is not totalled File Scavenger will get the data back, you dont get much more messed up that a drive claiming its RAW and only option is "Format Now".
 
Slogan said:
It doesn't look good, does it.

I wonder if I give it a pansy format and try to recover that would it do anything?

Probably stupidly, I still believe the data is right there. Just that the OS doesn't know how to read the disk given its format. Maybe that's just corruption....
Click to expand...

getdataback would reverse engineer the file system if there were any files left there.
Looks to be a hardware error. Try spinrite and the normal manufacturer diagnostics
 
Hey guys,

Thanks for the help. Those errors messages are pages and pages long - infact, the 'scan' that FS does on it just consists solely of those errors. And a physical problem isn't something I had considered - but it may be the only answer.

Windows won't even format the drive now - so I assume it is completely porked.

capturedk9.jpg


4l41hlg.jpg


Will do, SS. :)
 
Tried the Lifeguard tools from WD and thought I was getting somewhere with 'Reformat Partitions':

68bjnl3.jpg


Next step:

6god35u.jpg


But the partition still stays as RAW in Computer Management. Even tried restarting and it's still the same.

Just not a clue why it would tease me in such a way. That reformat was only on the J partition which housed the XP installation.
 
It's perhaps looking slightly more fatal than what I had thought

A 'quick format' would wipe just the MFT but leave the data intact on the drive. Then using Get Data Back recover the data, but it seems with 2 different programs that people swear by turning up nothing, it perhaps is looking more like a specialised recovery job. :(
 
Yeah, I think it's looking like a Rest In Peace job - as much as I hate to say that.

Won't be paying for a special lab job though.

Have e-mailed Western Digital with all the details I can provide them with to see if there's any last ditch effort I could make, but I doubt it.
 
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