Recovery software needed

[Technique]

Can be paid for if needs be. I don't really care at the moment, I just want my files back.

 

I'm looking at EaseUS data recovery: https://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm

Not the free one of course.

 

Am I ok to be using this software, should I use an alternative software? Should I use something else entirely before I even do this?

 

I'm freeing up space on a drive right now so you have about an hour before I just go ahead with it.

 

Basically I had a hard drive that showed in Computer but wouldn't let me access it. It's 6TB in capacity (Seagate Ironwolf) and It had something like 500GB-1TB of free space on it before this.

Disk management said it was now RAW with 100% available.

 

Chkdsk /r was ran, took about 7-8 hours and at the end of it it gave me a small fraction of what's on the drive.

 

When you went in to the drive (we'll call it D. It's I but I looks like 1 so it can be D for this). There would've been say 10-15 folders & in these folders, countless subfolders.

 

Now when you go in to D, there's 2 folders & those 2 folders have various subfolders & files missing.

 

Now Computer (Windows 7) says 4.41 TB free of 5.45 TB. So that's about 1TB I need to back up right? Yet when i highlight the folders, right click & go properties, it says about 472GB. Stumped me at first.

 

I then open Recycle Bin on my C drive for something else but I get bombarded with the Recycle Bin on Drive D is corrupt messages. I click no to them & then it goes away. As I look in the Recycle Bin, I see various files & folders ...... all which were on my D drive. In fact the path for them says that ... and I never deleted them!

 

And for the record, I have 'show hidden files & folders' turned on, so it's not like all my stuff is hidden & I'm worrying over nothing.

 

 

That's where I'm at right now.

 

I know there's various recovery programs out there. I don't know if anything needs doing before that or what. So before I jump in with both feet on EaseUS data recovery, do you have any advice?

I assume the drive is somewhat corrupt, yet CrystalDiskInfo says good?

[Technique]

Thanks for the explanation.

 

I have Acronis True Image 2019 which I recently learned can do cloning. I was going to use that.

Unless the program above is better?

 

Anyway, I could be wrong but I don't think the drive is 'bad'. I ran some low level scans which all appeared fine. Stellar disk recovery appeared fine.

 

I wonder if the issue was simply allowing chkdsk to be run, or pressing restart after it had started.

 

Anyway, the drive is out & I have an equivalent capacity drive so maybe I will set it up when I have plenty free time.

 

 

Out of interest - if both are connected internally and assuming the drive is relatively healthy (just that it had a crazy episode and 'lost' data), how long approximately would you expect it to take 6TB to be cloned sector-by-sector?

[aphanic]

On 06/07/2022 at 14:50, Technique said:

I have Acronis True Image 2019 which I recently learned can do cloning. I was going to use that.

Unless the program above is better?

Acronis' focuses on imaging and cloning drives that are healthy, readable, etc. The other one is geared towards data recovery, its approach my be better when it comes to imaging, but since you're using the drive connected via standard means they'd both use the same way of interacting with it. I don't know what Acronis' policy is when / if it encounters unreadable sectors and what it does, but because it's meant to copy there's no scanning to be done at the same time; if you wanted to perform data recovery in the cloned drive or image you'd need to scan it afterwards.

 

Other than that... I'm wary of their file format, being proprietary lacks interoperability with other programs.

 

On 06/07/2022 at 14:50, Technique said:

 

Anyway, I could be wrong but I don't think the drive is 'bad'. I ran some low level scans which all appeared fine. Stellar disk recovery appeared fine.

That'd be the first thing to assess to be honest, the state of the drive itself. Since it's a SATA drive anything that reads SMART data could be used, you already saw how that SSD looked in R-Studio, so I'm attaching a screenshot of how it'd look in GSmartControl and Hard Disk Sentinel, I'd run any of them to see what they report:

 

 

 

 

I don't have a completely busted drive for comparison so a pretty unreliable one would do, I wouldn't trust this one with anything of importance:

 

 

 

 

 

So... I'd suggest you first assess how your disks and then proceed from there. The first one being an SSD doesn't have much that may resemble yours, but take a look at the relocated sectors in yours and the number of relocation events, those have to do with damaged sectors. Other errors, like Ultra ATAs could be due to faulty wiring, for example, not very relevant unless there are plenty.

 

On 06/07/2022 at 14:50, Technique said:

I wonder if the issue was simply allowing chkdsk to be run, or pressing restart after it had started.

Hard to tell, but I don't think so. With Windows displaying it as RAW, something previous to that had already modified the partition table, or filesystem structures before you used chkdsk.

 

On 06/07/2022 at 14:50, Technique said:

Out of interest - if both are connected internally and assuming the drive is relatively healthy (just that it had a crazy episode and 'lost' data), how long approximately would you expect it to take 6TB to be cloned sector-by-sector?

That would depend on the disks I'm afraid, and it varies depending on where in the disk the heads are reading (closer to the center vs. closer to the edge), it won't really saturate a SATA interface anyway, but let's say 160MB/s. If it were a healthy drive with no damaged sectors, relocations etc. it should be read in about half a day I think (but the speed won't be constant), writing on the other hand would be slower (to the new disk), more so if it's an SMR drive when the write cache is exhausted, but it really depends, it's hard to say.

[Technique]

On 06/07/2022 at 23:18, aphanic said:

Hard to tell, but I don't think so. With Windows displaying it as RAW, something previous to that had already modified the partition table, or filesystem structures before you used chkdsk.

 

 

First off, thank you for your response.

 

Secondly, I know this question is a little pointless because what's happened has happened & there's no undoing it.

Still, I'm going to ask regardless...

 

Could it have anything to do with removing & re-inserting drives to my PC?

 

Basically the drive was running perfectly fine for years & while I appreciate these things can happen on any given day, the timing of it is more than just a little coincidental to me - I had been attaching and removing drives as I set up a new SSD to move to Windows 10 from Windows 7. I didn't have the drive space or ports to have them all connected so I would just remove a drive, work a bit on Windows 10, need to go back to Windows 7 so remove some drives, re-attach other drives etc.

 

It was around doing this that it stopped being accessible in Computer & wanted to do chkdsk on startup.

[aphanic]

On 07/07/2022 at 17:11, Technique said:

Could it have anything to do with removing & re-inserting drives to my PC?

It's possible... but I'd say it's really unlikely. Electronics are usually sensitive to electrostatic discharge, most come in ESD-safe bags (those translucent, kinda metallic ones), by having them around without any kind of protection they could be damaged by it; but nowadays most are built to be able to withstand several thousand kV of ESD without further shielding.

 

It could just be that it presents a manufacturing defect that only really caused a failure now, or a degraded connector or cable, I couldn't tell for sure.

[Technique]

@aphanic (or anyone else for that matter) - So I've just come now to begin doing sector-by-sector cloning on the duff 6TB drive. Typically I've gone & inserted the wrong drive in to my machine so while the PC is on, I just did a bit of Googling to get an estimate on the length of time this will take.

 

I knew it was going to be long with it being 6TB. I'm checking that I've read accurate info on HOW long though...

 

https://www.easeus.com/backup-utility/easeus-todo-clone.html

 

^^ That was one URL that gave an answer. I don't necessarily mean I will use EaseUS. I was actually looking to use R-Studio as you gave a how-to but I imagine there wont be a massive difference in time between the two.

 

Anyway, the above URL basically at the end says:

 

Quote

Bonus Tip: How Long Does Sector-by-Sector Clone Take?

Unlike the normal backup, a sector-by-sector clone definitely would take a longer time. According to users' feedback, cloning a 1TB disk sector-by-sector will take 20 to 30 hours. So if you want to make such a time-consuming clone, please be patient.

 

 

20-30hrs PER TB.

So a 6TB puts me at 120-180 hours.

To call it down the middle, 150 hours ... 6.25 days, assuming a constant speed throughout.

 

 

Would you say that's probably accurate?

 

I was expecting 30-48 hours maybe.