SG Broadband Community

My second hard drive just failed!!

It's a Western Digital Green 1Gb SATA; I've been using it as a second hdd for storage, for about 1.5 years.

I can't see it with Explorer.

Error messages:
"E: is not accessible. Data error (cyclic redundancy error)"
and
"You need to format the disk before you can use it"

This happened suddenly, today, out of the blue.

When I go to Disk Management, after a long time it says that the drive is RAW and healthy!

I ran a test with SeaTools after rebooting and it shows that "test failed" and some codes.

Here are the images:
http://box.c.yimg.jp/res/box-s-m5p45coc7pieuy6gfsq7iyylnq-1001?uid=d8970534-b3e0-46b2-a5f2-22096f1f558a&etag=127004bd13639665552443

http://box.c.yimg.jp/res/box-s-m5p45coc7pieuy6gfsq7iyylnq-1001?uid=68a100c0-b607-4a0b-9869-e9eae2aafc2e&etag=c29ce28113639665568395

http://box.c.yimg.jp/res/box-s-m5p45coc7pieuy6gfsq7iyylnq-1001?uid=824e7587-ef94-495d-bb41-2c13f117e2c6&etag=eea839131363966558102131

The hdd gave little signs of problems before (like cyclic redundancy error), so at that time I ran check disk at boot, but it never happened to fail..

Please help, what can I do?

You can send it off to a data recovery company but it will cost you.

Yeah, that would be the ultimate solution, but I thought there may be some things I could try before that..

If it's important data and you cannot afford to lose, ship it off to a data recovery company.

If you want to try a few tools yourself, we use EaseUS tools more than others lately.
http://www.easeus.com/

Thanks for the tip,
however, since the drive is not recognized no software can be used for it.
I can only suspect that it's a hardware problem...

Ranger wrote:Thanks for the tip,
however, since the drive is not recognized no software can be used for it.
I can only suspect that it's a hardware problem...

I was only going on the facts you posted in your initial post. I didn't know it failed to be seen in BIOS after that.
But based on your first post, the operating system assigned it a drive letter...thus it IS being seen.
Based on the 3 screenshots you posted...it IS being seen.

OK, you could say that, in the sense that the drive letter is there.
However when you click on it in Explorer, the computer hangs forever and I have to forcefully close Explorer.
No file or folder can be seen on drive.

Understood....we see this almost weekly (I support small to medium business networks for a living and we have over 150 active SMB clients)
This is where recovery software comes in....when Windows (or your operating system..whatever it is) cannot read a volume or partition, you turn to data recovery software.

So in my case:
- Explorer can't access it
- SeaTools, run at boot, says too many bad sectors, test failed
- WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics, run in Windows says the same

would you think that there is a chance to recover anything with a software, in Windows....?
I think that would be a miracle, but anyway for this case which software would you use?

Ranger wrote:So in my case:
- Explorer can't access it
- SeaTools, run at boot, says too many bad sectors, test failed
- WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics, run in Windows says the same

would you think that there is a chance to recover anything with a software, in Windows....?
I think that would be a miracle, but anyway for this case which software would you use?

Try YeOldeStonecat's suggestion on EaseUS tools: http://www.easeus.com/
Or you could try TestDisk: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Main_Page

Ranger wrote:So in my case:
- Explorer can't access it
- SeaTools, run at boot, says too many bad sectors, test failed
- WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics, run in Windows says the same

would you think that there is a chance to recover anything with a software, in Windows....?
I think that would be a miracle, but anyway for this case which software would you use?

Nope. It's done. If you want the data and are willing to pay to get it I would suggest gillware.com.

Ranger wrote:So in my case:
- Explorer can't access it
- SeaTools, run at boot, says too many bad sectors, test failed
- WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics, run in Windows says the same

would you think that there is a chance to recover anything with a software, in Windows....?
I think that would be a miracle, but anyway for this case which software would you use?

Yes....I covered all of that above.
You can get a drive to show up in Windows....so obviously it's being detected "hardware wise"..meaning it is showing up in the BIOS of the system. That is the most important thing.
As long as the drive is showing up in the BIOS of the system, it's being detected on the hardware level...and data recovery tools have a chance to work.
You can use tools in Windows, like EaseUS...or many others.
There are also many..many recovery tools, which work outside of Windows....from boot disks, or various *nix distros. We use them all. However EaseUS has worked very well for us lately so we go right to that.

It's good to "clone" the "bad" disk using a boot disk with a *nix clone utility...to close it to another disk..and attempt your data recovery from that other disk.

But anyways...you're on a good path, Windows clearly sees the volume...it gave it a drive letter. There's probably some MFT or MBR or FAT issues with it, since it's prompting you to format it. That's where good data recovery software comes in....it can put the broken pieces back together. Don't let Windows format it. Let the data recovery software do what it has to do. You probably have >50% chance of getting your info back.

If your systems BIOS doesn't even see the drive...that's a hardware issue, like the circuit board on the hard drive is dead. Can swap for another circuit board from a working identical HDD.

YeOldeStonecat wrote:If it's important data and you cannot afford to lose, ship it off to a data recovery company.

If you want to try a few tools yourself, we use EaseUS tools more than others lately.
http://www.easeus.com/

Hello,
My HDD is failing and I lost some emails from Outlook.
Can this software be used to recover emails? or is there another option like OutlookFIX but better it is free.

bruno88 wrote:Hello,
My HDD is failing and I lost some emails from Outlook.
Can this software be used to recover emails?
Thanks.

Outlook stores all data in a PST file..assuming this is a residential setup (POP/IMAP)...and not MS Exchange server (in which case it's all in the mailbox store anyways, with just a local cache file ..OST).

Generally if a hard drive is failing, file will corrupt. If a PST corrupts..it's generally not readable...it's not like you can open some e-mails and not others. It's usually all, or nothing.
Easues recovers files from a corrupt/unreadable drive. Yours appears to still be working.
Best thing to do is restore the PST from previous backup. If email is important..hopefully you were backing it up.