Can't open hard drive all of a sudden

Chrizum

New Member
Hello everybody,

I run Windows 7 on an SSD, and I also have two SATA hard drives connected. It worked perfectly for years, but in all of a sudden, I can't open one of the drives (the D: drive). When I try to open it, Windows says "this drive needs to be formatted". Obviously I don't want that, as the drive contains lots of music projects. When I open Disk Management, Windows does recognize the drive, but it also sees a 100mb partition with the message "reserved by system".

Man, what can I do to fix this? This is really bumming me out! Any help is greatly appreciated!
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Sounds like the drive may be failing. What I would do is figure out the brand of the drive and use the drive manufacturers disk diagnostic program to test the drive.
 

Chrizum

New Member
I downloaded de Seagate tool, ran a Long Generic test, it completed and now my disk is entirely gone. Windows and Disk Management both can't see it. This can't be right...
 

Chrizum

New Member
I ran the Long Generic and it completed but didn't say anything at all. The drive was gone in Windows explorer however. I now connected it with a different SATA cable, and the disk is back, but I still can't open it.

Currently I'm running a Basic Test with the tool. First it wouldn't let me, but now it's running. Fingers crossed...
 

Chrizum

New Member
Okay, I downloaded Crystal to analyze the disk, and it seems bad:
5953d62262b8c-hdd.png


Is there anything I can do to save my data?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
If you can't get a system to recognize it, basically a lost cause. You can try booting to a live Linux cream to see if it detects it to pull data from it.
 

JaredDM

Active Member
The fact that you are still able to read SMART is actually a good sign as far as professional recovery is concerned. If the data has value to you (worth $400-600) then it's worthwhile to send out for professional recovery. It may not be that expensive at this point and has a very good chance to succeed. But, be aware that the more you mess around trying things, the lower you chance of ever getting the files back will be. DIY should only be attempted if you're certain that you're not willing to pay for professional service.

That having been said, if you are intent on DIY, Linux isn't a bad idea. But, you shouldn't just try to mount the drive and copy files. I know a lot of guys will probably try to argue this, but they also haven't fixed thousands of broken drives to recover data like I have. Your first order of business should be to clone the entire drive to another healthy drive of the same or larger capacity. To do this, you should use either ddrescue (guide here) or you might try hddsuperclone. Both run in Linux and both are specifically designed to clone drives with bad sectors like yours. Don't attempt to clone in Windows under any circumstance! Windows isn't well designed to handle drives with bad sectors.

The reason that this is better than just trying to mount and copy/paste has a lot to do with HDD mechanics. Reading sectors sequentially (from 0 on up) is far less straining to a drive than thrashing the heads around trying to copy a million files all stored in different places. Plus, ddrescue and hddsuperclone are able to detect bad sectors and will intelligently jump over bad areas on the first pass. This prevents the drive from continually reading a bad area over and over until it kills the heads. Then, after the first pass, these programs will come back around and try to re-read within the damaged areas to get as much as possible.

After you get a good clone of the drive, you'll want to run data recovery software against the clone. It's unlikely it'll mount, and you definitely don't want to do something stupid like running chkdsk against a drive you need data from. But, any decent data recovery software will likely be able to find all your data afterward.

If you want to go the professional recovery route, just let me know where you are located and I can probably recommend a good company near you. I correspond with other data recovery labs around the world on a daily basis.

Also, just a note about your specific model. This model I believe is a terminal locked drive. Seagate basically password protected their latest models so that only their data recovery company can work on them (can you say antitrust?) and modify their firmware code. It makes them nearly impossible for data recovery labs to work on as there are only a few companies who have managed to crack this protection. Right now, recovery should still be possible w/o needing to use the terminal. But if it's pushed too hard and the heads die, recovery will be near impossible and very expensive. Thus the reason you should weigh carefully if you want professional service now, before it is too late.
 
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Chrizum

New Member
Thank you for your detailed reply, JaredDM. I have an identical HDD, but it contains all kinds of data. Will that work or do I need an empty and formatted HDD to clone? Also, I'd consider myself medium tech savy (mostly in a practical sense, not a theoretical sense), and I have never performed an HDD clone nor have I worked with Linux before. Do you think it is worth the try or do I risk to lose my data permanently when DIY?

Thanks.
 
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JaredDM

Active Member
Thank you for your detailed reply, JaredDM. I have an identical HDD, but it contains all kinds of data. Will that work or do I need an empty and formatted HDD to clone? Also, I'd consider myself medium tech savy (mostly in a practical sense, not a theoretical sense), and I have never performed an HDD clone nor have I worked with Linux before. Do you think it is worth the try or do I risk to lose my data permanently when DIY?

Thanks.

I think it's a matter that you need to weigh carefully yourself. DIY carries risk. For example, the drive could die halfway through cloning and you'll only have part of your data cloned. Or worse yet, you could mess up and clone data the wrong direction and really make recovery impossible. So it's a risk you need to weigh carefully. If the data can't be rebuilt and you're willing to pay a few hundred dollars to be sure you get it back safely, then professional recovery is definitely the better route. At recovery labs, we have hardware imaging tools that allow a much greater level of customized settings. So we can optimize reading while minimizing the risk of ruining the drive completely during extraction.
 

Chrizum

New Member
Hello JaredDM,

I am willing to spend a few hundred bucks to save my data, but what is the succes rate in cases like this? And where do I need to go? I'm located in the Netherlands, and I have a bad experience with my local computer shop recovering data, many files were corrupted or old versions of files,, had unidentifiable names, etc.
 

Chrizum

New Member
Today I delivered my disk to a data recovery center. To avoid having these issues in the future, I want to set up a RAID 1 configuration, while running Windows 7 on my SSD. What happens when the SSD dies and I want to put my RAID 1 drives in a new system (say Windows 10)? Does all data transfer or will I have trouble with controllers or drivers?
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
will I have trouble with controllers or drivers?
Depends what setup you use. Usually arrays are very controller specific unless you roll a software based one.

Also, even with a RAID array it's still a good idea to keep other backups that aren't connected to the system.
 

Chrizum

New Member
Depends what setup you use. Usually arrays are very controller specific unless you roll a software based one.

Also, even with a RAID array it's still a good idea to keep other backups that aren't connected to the system.

So maybe it's wiser to put all non-OS data on disk 1, and schedule weekly backups to disk 2?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Even if you were to raid 1 with 2 drives, you can still take one drive and attach it to system and it will recognize it and you'll have your data. At least thats the way it was years ago when I did my raid 1. Raid 0 is different. I wouldn't raid an ssd to a mechanical hard drive though.
 

Chrizum

New Member
Even if you were to raid 1 with 2 drives, you can still take one drive and attach it to system and it will recognize it and you'll have your data. At least thats the way it was years ago when I did my raid 1. Raid 0 is different. I wouldn't raid an ssd to a mechanical hard drive though.

The way my system is set up is:

1) I run Windows and most software from SSD
2) I have two identical SATA drives for all kinds of data and programs (mostly music projects, art projects and games).

Would it be better to have everything at 2) on one disk, and use the other disk for scheduled backups? Or would a RAID 1 be just as safe?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Just all depends on what you wanted to do. If you have data that is really important to you, then having it on multiple media is best. Even external usb drive failures are pretty common. If you do raid 1 then you'll suffer some speed loss while it writes data to both drives.
 

Cromewell

Administrator
Staff member
Even if you were to raid 1 with 2 drives, you can still take one drive and attach it to system and it will recognize it and you'll have your data. At least thats the way it was years ago when I did my raid 1. Raid 0 is different. I wouldn't raid an ssd to a mechanical hard drive though.
Generally that is the case. I think most controllers consumers run into will just be straight up block level copiers and you wouldn't have any issues taking a single drive and putting it in another machine (beyond the normal driver stuff if it's a drastically different hardware set). There are some that can tell the disks came from another controller (even the exact same model) and you have to jump through a few hoops.

Any software RAID1 is definitely movable.
Just all depends on what you wanted to do. If you have data that is really important to you, then having it on multiple media is best. Even external usb drive failures are pretty common.
Agreed. Though both RAID and a backup drive are technically different media. It all depends on what you are trying to protect yourself from. A disk failure? RAID is fine. But something like accidental deletion, then you want a backup.
If you do raid 1 then you'll suffer some speed loss while it writes data to both drives.
Luckily for RAID1, this actually goes very fast. For a block copy, you are just limited by how fast the drives are. It's arrays with parity to calculate that take forever.
 
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