OT: Hard Drive Recovery

[Brent Evans]

I have a Toshiba 1TB USB hard drive that has quite a bit of data stored there, and much of it is personal that can't be recreated. This is a "backup" drive which has been accumulating for some time. Now, it reads as a "RAW" partition in Disk Management. I've done some research and it seems like it might be a FAT problem, but after several utilities, I'm getting nowhere fast. Currently running is a program called "TestDisk," and I've tried several partition managers and Linux boot CDs to no avail.

Has anyone dealt with this successfully?

[JLepore]

Can you get to the SMART data on the drive through your bios and at least verify that the controller (and cables/MB port/power/etc.) is working properly on the drive?

Hard to think that a partition would just disappear - especially since there is a backup of the partition table on the drive in case the primary version fails.

[Dan Fulton]

I would try taking the drive out of the case and attaching it directly to a motherboard. Possible that the usb interface has screwed up

[hkmorgan87]

I had the same issue on a WD hard drive a few weeks ago. Sadly there is very little that can be done in these situations. But try these few suggestions.

Try a different cable
Try a different USB port
If windows or your live Linux cd mounts the hdd so that you can view the raw partition, you should be able to run a scan disk to see if the MBR has been corrupted for some reason.
I also agree with JLepore on checking SMART attributes. Most new drives keep track of vital info regarding hdd performance. If the drive shows up in windows and a raw partition, you might be able to check your SMART attributes. I'm away from my home computer right, but I'll post the name of a good SMART attribute reader in a few hours.

[JLepore]

oh .. I totally missed the USB bit - yes .. by all means, remove it from the case and attach it directly to a machine. It may simply be the USB interface controller has lost it's mind, or the driver stub on the PC got screwed up.

[hkmorgan87]

Disk Checkup is the name of the SMART program I was talking about.
http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm

[Brent Evans]

The utilities I've tried are able to access the drive and see a partition, I just haven't found one to read the data yet.

If I pull the drive out of the enclosure, it will be a permanent thing... this enclosure is a more or less sealed box. I'd probably have to cut the drive out.

After the current scan finishes, I'll try the SMAART utility.

[Brent Evans]

Interestingly... several utilities have hung at 51% of their respective scans. Maybe coincidence... maybe not.

SMART Data shows up fine.

UPDATE:

Ubuntu recognizes and reads the drive. Looks like I just need to get another drive and transfer the data, then reformat this drive and transfer back.

[Bob L]

When a drive starts to act up... my experience has shown that the best you could do is transfer the data as fast as possible to another drive and then throw the first drive away... you may not get a second chance to save the data the more the drive is turned on... and reformatting and starting over is usually a bad idea.

Just something to consider.

Bob L

[Craig Allen]

When a drive starts to act up... my experience has shown that the best you could do is transfer the data as fast as possible to another drive and then throw the first drive away... you may not get a second chance to save the data the more the drive is turned on... and reformatting and starting over is usually a bad idea.

Just something to consider.

Bob L

+1. Drives are cheap.