External HDD suddenly needs reformatting?

Two days ago, I tried to access a music file on my external (Seagate GoFlex 500 gb, the portable one) and noticed that any folder I was going through loaded very slow, or not completely.

I thought it was a hiccup or something along that line, so I opted to restart my laptop (Asus G73JH, Windows 7) whereupon the drive no longer showed me the available space left, and simply stated that it must be reformatted before it could be used.

This has happened to me once in the past with an external I bought in Japan, so at that time I used a program called "Easeus Data Recovery" and managed to recover my files. This time around, the program doesn't seem to be doing very well (time remaining in "complete recovery" is stuck at around 100 hours, files found/identified are at 66 and it's already been 1 day).

In this particular case, is it possible to tell whether or not the data is salvageable in one way or another? The external itself seems to be operating normally without any strange noises (although it does feel a little bit hot, though I'm not sure if that's how it usually is).

I've also bought a new external (also Seagate GoFflex ultra-portable 1.5 TB) and have tried using the new USB cable/connector with the bad drive with no effect.

I've received several suggestions at this point:

-Use HDTune to scan the system for errors and send it into Easeus for some type of diagnosis
-My friend suggested I buy a HD loader, remove the enclosure for my external and load it up there. This is definitely something I want to try, but I'd like to leave it for the second-to-last resort.
-As a final resort, if nothing else works, I suppose I'll have to consider a Data Recovery lab option despite how ridiculously expensive it may be.

There's probably about 400-500 gigabytes of data on my external, but I'd probably say the absolute critical portion that I must recover shouldn't go higher than 100-200 gigabytes.

I was hoping if anybody could tell what kind of problem I might have encountered at this point, or if more details are required?

Thanks!

 

Start with running a diagnostic on the HDD, if the HDD is failing, there is a good chance your data is lost.

 

Is there a specific diagnostic program you recommend? Or should I stick with HDTune? I've read somewhere that chkdsk might not be the best service to use in this case, so until I find out more about that I think I'll avoid it.

At this point I can only guess that it's a logical error/failure (no strange noises, the external itself seems to be running fine and it is detected in "My Computer" vaguely), so it's given me hope that the chance for data recovery is much higher and that I might be able to find a way to recover my information without having to rely on a company.

Since I'm at work now, I'll be getting home in about 6-7 hours. I'll check the progress of the EASEUS recovery program and if it hasn't changed, I'll probably stop it and let HDTune do its work... but other than that, I'd greatly appreciate any advice anybody can have!

 

I have had hdd`s and flash drive`s do this to me and i though all the data was lost, but after a few hours/days of just re-connecting it to my notebook or another one, it started to work again, do not be tempted to format it or you will have to do a deleted file recovery which can take days.

John.

 

This sounds very interesting. I definitely won't be reformatting or trying to alter the contents inside the external drive (aside from using a recovery program or diagnosis program). I'm planning on keeping it safe unless I decide to remove it from its enclosure to try that method my friend suggested, but hopefully doing this won't damage anything inside either.

The first thing I'm going to do when I get access to the data inside is back it up on the old external I no longer use and the new one I just bought .

 

So I've come home and found that the EASEUS data recovery isn't making any progress and decided to try using HD Tune Pro's error scan... the scan is still in the early stage, but it looks like there's going to be a lot of "Damaged blocks" (I think this means bad sectors maybe?).

If it turns out that there are many bad sectors, is the data unrecoverable, or would it be salvageable by a recovery program, removing the enclosure, running it through linux, or etc.?

 

As long as the disk drive is recognizable as a disk drive, there are salvaging programs that can ignore bad sectors and just take what they can while they can, even if they don't know the size or type of the drive. If you don't mind paying, File Scavenger is one that has been very reliable for me (not free) in the past with drives that have been shotgunned with bad clusters (at least, it'd look like a shotgun blast if you could see them on the platter )

There are also better ones, but I've never tried them yet. File scavenger has been able to do it for me as long as it shows up as a disk drive (even if its not recognizable as anything else)

Also, the last bad drive I had, I attached it to an enclosure PCB, put in a plastic bag with some silica gel beads, put the bag in another bag, tied the end up around the cord, and put it in a cooler with some freezer gel packs. It worked quite well and kept the drive cold for 3 hours while operating and from clicking too much.

Oh, also, to actually regenerate bad clusters physically, even if only to fix enough to get data off the drive. There are 2 good programs known to effectively do it:

HDAT2/CBL Hard Disk Repair Utility - free, havent used it yet so not sure how effective but others say it works

Dmitriy Primochenko Online - not free, but is quite effective

 

Haha, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better (I'm pretty stressed at the possibility of losing some precious photos, videos and my music to a lesser degree). HD Tune is scanning my external slowly but surely and the results so far definitely don't seem good (more red than green represented in the graph that shows good "blocks" and "damaged blocks"), so I was beginning to lose hope.

 

Glad to help! However, the last thing you should let it do then is leave the drive on; you need to quit scanning it and churning the drive. Get appropriate software first, since the more time a degrading drive runs and has to work the more risk that it'll die. Its like a car about to overheat... dont use the miles for anything except to get home safely or avoid being stranded.

Also, doing the cooler method can help prevent anything going wrong too since heat is the #1 enemy of electronics. Wrap it up, stuff it in the cooler, scan and retrieve files off the drive ASAP with the right software. I'm using an old version of file scavenger (3.0) and while it lets you manually exclude sectors, it doesn't automatically skip bad sectors. Make sure you check if 4.0 has that option, or else you'll be doing a bit of trial and error of which sectors you need to manually exclude.

 

Thanks. I was planning on leaving it on for the full scan so I could screenshot it and post it, but I have a feeling the scan will take a long time. (1 hour, 30 minutes and it's scanned 2 gigabytes out of ... about around 450ish? Maybe the speed will increase if it's not covering a currently bad sector). Do you think this would be too risky? I guess I definitely have a few programs that have been suggested, but it now feels like the sense of urgency has drastically increased .

 

No, its pretty obvious that its starting to get bad physically, so there's really no point in letting it keep going. You need something that'll efficiently do it rather than over work the HDD. You dont have to worry as long as youre not hammering the HDD with inefficient scans and leaving it unplugged until you're ready with something that does better. Even terrible drives can be scanned very quickly if the software works right.

 

Thanks. Your advice has been amazing so far. I tried the trial version of HDD Regenerator and it was able to regenerate a bad sector (I'm not even sure how this works). So in this case, I guess I should get the full version, use that and then it would allow recovery programs to work quicker?

 

I bought HDD Regenerator, and although it is indeed scanning my external and slowly "regenerating bad sectors", it is incredibly slow (the remaining time has been steadily increasing; at 20 minutes, the remaining time is at 166 hours and still increasing).

I've read online that HDD Regenerator might actually damage the drive and erase data that I might be able to otherwise salvage; do you think it's safe, or should I find some kind of way to make a copy of everything? I'm a little reluctant to let it continue since someone said that.

EDIT: By this point, HD Tune Pro, a recovery program and HDD Regenerator have all had the same symptom- the remaining time for any sort of scan increases to over 100 to 200 hours. Normally I'd let this process run with a little patience, but I'm afraid that the external might fail after reading some of the advice here. At this point would a data recovery service/company be the only choice?

EDIT #2: I think I'm going to attempt to make an image or clone the disk (I'll have to figure out which one it is) of the external when I get back home. Does anybody know if Acronis or a similar program is safe to use for this purpose? I've learned that I can increase my chances of recovering the data if I try to recover it through an image or a cloned disk (I do have a spare external to be able to use for this purpose), but I haven't found anything on whether or not any of these types of programs work for my situation, or if they will hang and not finish properly due to the bad sectors.