Appeal For Help-External HDD's Containing Years of Photos Are Suddenly Not Co-operating. Complete Mystery

[Kidderman]

Hello CF members,
I consider myself to be reasonably computer-savvy, but an issue has arisen recently which has got me beat. Earlier this year, I decided it was time to gather up all family digital photo and video material. A family member lost a phone and was gutted to have lost the photos contained in it. It made me realise that it was time to move everything from numerous separate devices into a central storage device. I bought two 2.5" hard drives from Ebay, formatted them (NTFS) and ran them through Seagate Tools to check their integrity. Both drives passed all tests. I then installed them into external drive caddies.
Next part of the process was the time-consuming job of locating all the content and transferring it onto one of the drives, (the G drive). That was done successfully, being checked each time more content was transferred to the drive. I then copied all content from the G drive to the second drive (E) to ensure that I had a backup. Again, I checked that the backup had been carried out successfully. Both drives were then stored in a safe location away from electronic equipment of any kind.
About a month later (very recently), I plugged drive G into a Windows 10 laptop. An error message appeared telling me that the drive was not recognised. This message wasn't something which I'd encountered previously. I did some research, and was able to overcome the problem by going into the Properties menu for the drive, selecting Security and adding a new user with full permissions. Job done, I thought. Since that occasion, Both drives have stopped working due to accessibility issues. The problem is the same when the drives are plugged into three different Windows 10 PC's.
I'm unable to access the content on the drives. Please see photo 3. I can no longer access the Security tab in the Properties menu for either drive. The tab has disappeared (see photo 1). I've noticed that both drives appear to have the RAW file system instead of the NTFS system which they were formatted in. (see photo 2). I've had the error message from drive G: "The drive is not accessible. The volume does not contain a recognised file system".
I have no idea as to why or how this problem has arisen with both drives at the same time. None of it makes any sense. I'm hoping that there's a way of solving this without losing the data on the drives. I'm reluctant to try an expensive data recovery program which may not work. However, I used a free trial to carry out a scan on one of the drives. The scan seemed to get into one of the drives and indicated that there was a significant amount of photo and video content on it. That was when I was invited to take out an expensive subscription in order to recover the files. (which I didn't do).
I'm sorry that this post is so long, I just felt that I needed to provide as much information as possible in the hope that some of it leads to one or more members being able to figure out what's gone wrong and how to solve the problem. All constructive advice will be considered and gratefully received.

 

[Darren]

First thing I would do is get them out of the caddies and see if they're recognized in a docking station or even directly plugged in with SATA.

If they're reporting as RAW, that shouldn't have anything to do with permissions.

Either the drives failed, or the caddys are having problems. I'd suspect the latter first. You mention 2.5" drives. These mechanical (spinning) drives or SSDs?

 

[Kidderman]

Hi, they're mechanical drives. What I can't figure out is why they'd both develop exactly the same problem at the same time, i.e. they're both presenting as RAW and are denying me access. I have three other caddies which contain drives on which I'm storing data. I guess it would make sense to try both problematic drives in those caddies. I don't have a docking station. The problematic caddies have been plugged in to three different Windows 10 PC's, with the same outcome. I'm guessing that would rule out a problem with USB ports. I'm not sure what you mean by directly plugging in with SATA. The caddies are SATA. Please excuse my uncertainty, it's not an issue which I've come across before. I'll try the other caddies and post the outcomes. For now, I'm reassured that the content appears to be on the drives according to the data recovery scan which I ran. It appears from what I've seen that going down the data recovery route is somewhat hit and miss. I'm wondering if another test with Seagate tools would be worthwhile in order to again check the integrity of the drives? I really appreciate your response, thanks.

 

[Kidderman]

I just tried both drives in three other caddies. Same outcome: "drive inaccessible, not a recognised file system" or "drive needs to be formatted". I tried other drives in both caddies where the problematic drives were originally installed. No problems at all with the alternative drives and content being recognised. I guess that indicates that the problem lies within the drives E and G themselves. I'm wondering why-when I first encountered the accessibility issue-I was able to resolve it via the Properties>Security>Permissions route, and then that route became closed due to the Security tab disappearing? Strange. There's a Youtube video on how to change the file system from RAW to NTFS without losing data. Problem is, it can only be done via accessing the Properties>Security tab, which for whatever reason has disappeared. I'm holding onto the idea that the photo and video data remain on the drives. Just to be sure, I'll run the recovery program scans on each drive once again to confirm. I'll also run Seagate Tools again to check whether there's any kind of physical problem which has developed since last time I checked.

 

[beers]

Did the file system indicate NTFS before you changed the permissions, and then went to RAW? That might explain your menu options since it's a permissions aspect of the file system.

Do you use the 'safe to remove' button when you remove the drives from the system? Did you have any hard power-offs while the drives were connected to the system?

It sounds like the data itself is intact based on whatever scanning software you used. I'd make a 1:1 clone of the drive before you start working on it and then try to repair the file system with a fsck or similar like chkdsk /r

 

[Kidderman]

Hi,
I didn't notice whether the the file sysem indicated NTFS before I changed permissions, I just assumed that everything was ok. I wasn't aware of a 'safe to remove' button at any time when removing the drives. It's not something which I knew existed. There were no hard power-offs that I'm aware of while the drives were connected to the system. Since my last post, I've run one of the drives (the first drive where the photos were stored) through Seagate Seatools. Seatools wouldn't pick up the second drive. The drive failed the checks, therefore I have to accept that there is a physical failure. My next idea was to run a scan through a recovery program (Wondershare Recoverit), to see whether any content would show up. Please see photo 2. It's the E drive. It's a partial scan (I stopped it when it became apparent that the scan was overheating my PC). The scan indicates a considerable amount of NTFS files. Why are there NTFS files showing up when the file system has been changed to RAW? The same applies the the G drive (photo 1). Now that it's been confirmed that the photo and video content of both drives is there on the drives, it should be a case of getting the content off one of the drives into another area. That's going to be the tricky part. Thanks a lot for posting.