Recovering Files From An Unallocated Drive With Bad Sectors

I've currently got a Lenovo X220. Windows is installed on an mSata Solid State Drive and I use the 320GB 7200 RPM Hitachi drive for storage.

Unfortunately, a week or so ago the Hitachi drive failed. I primarily used the drive for storing photos and videos from my travels. I had around 10-12 GB of photos and videos. As I'm travelling just now, I purchased the 100GB account from dropbox.

I was trying to upload all of my photos to dropbox so that if the drive failed or my laptop was stolen, I wouldn't lose any photos. Whilst staying at a hotel with a great internet connection, I left my computer on to upload the photos. When I woke up, the computer was stalling and wouldn't respond to anything so I had to manually switch it off and switch it back on.

When I switched it back on, the Hitachi drive (E Drive) was not showing. Under disk management the drive can still be seen but it is set as unallocated. As I need to recover the files, I have not reformatted it or attempted to do any writing to the disk.

Recovering The Files

I have did some scans of the disk with things like testdisk and hd tune pro and they all show bad sectors on the disk.

From what I have read, I believe the problem is not physical as if it was, I probably wouldn't be able to reformat it (I'm not sure about this though). Over the last week I have tried over a dozen recovery applications in order to recover the files. They all allow me to scan the disk and attempt to recover the partition.

In practice, none of them seem to work. I left my computer on for 3 days to allow EaseUS to recover the partition and at the end of the 3 days the application stalled and then when I skipped a step it showed nothing.

I am not sure if the other applications work. The main problem is the time it takes to scan the disk. Most of these applications state that a quick scan will take around 150 hours. I assume the applications are taking this long because they are having problems reading bad sectors.

Has anyone ever had this problem?

I'm unsure about a few things:

• Do I need to repair the bad sectors before attempting to recover the partition?
• Is the only way to repair a drive with bad sectors to format it?
• Has anyone been in this situation and had success with a particular recovery application?

I've read dozens of articles on this subject and tried over a dozen applications as well. I feel like I've reached a wall as nothing I try seems to work.

At this point, money isn't a major concern for me. I'm happy to pay $99 for an application if it successfully recovers the files.

I'm also happy to leave the computer on a day or so to recover the files but I don't want to keep doing this over and over with different applications as when an app is trying to recover files, the computer is unusable as you need to switch off any other programs.

Would really appreciate any help that any members could give me on this

Thanks,
Kevin

 

I have not seen any software being able to fix a broken HDD (which I believe yours is, sorry).

If money is no object - and your files are that precious/important to you - I recommend a HDD recovery service (not a specific one though).

Last client that had to use that came to around $3K for about 30GB of data.

Hope you have better luck.

 

I was hoping the hard drive wasn't totally broken. I certainly wouldn't pay 3 grand to recover the files.

Is there any way to check if a hard drive is broken? Does bad sectors always mean files can't be recovered?

The only way I know of checking if the drive can be used is to format it and then see if files are retained over time, though that's not an option as if I do that the files will be lost.

 

hello
try this one
About DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery Software)
you can download and try free version (you can recover 1 file in time)

 

Thanks for the tip Lnd. Just downloaded it. Will give it a try and see how it performs

 

It worked fantastically. It found all my files in under 20 minutes. The demo allowed me to recover a few files one by one and it worked perfectly. Just ordered the full version. Once they have authorised the payment, I should be able to recover all files.

Thanks for the tip. I had spent so much time on this. I really can't believe there was software out there that resolved this issue so quickly.

 

Let us know if the software was able to recover all your files. Reading the FAT tables and recovering the actual files can be a beast.

GL

 

nice to hear that

 

Unfortunately the software didn't work. It does manage to show all previous files, something which no other software was able to do, however I wasn't able to recover all files. When I try to recover files it starts off well then runs into some bad sectors and then tries to start again.

I've contacted the company for some advice but I'm not holding out much hope

 

I was really hoping to see this work for you... still hope you have some luck with this.

 

Thanks. Fingers crossed. They got back to me quickly and advised that cloning the disk and then trying a recovery could be one solution.

 

Worth trying I suppose (if this is the last thing you're willing to spend/try...), but keep in mind that if reading it directly (with all the error correction the program provides...) isn't able to recover the files a 'simple' clone won't either. If you were able to clone (i.e., 'read') from the drive, we wouldn't be here talking now.

The more you do with the drive, the less your chances of recovering files become.

Hope you're keeping the drive in a cool place (just above freezing, inside a plastic bag to prevent moisture from forming, with as much rice or silica gel as you can put with it to suck out any moisture from the electronics/platters) and not leaving it powered on unnecessarily...

 

The drive was still kept in the laptop (I didn't think this would be an issue). I appreciate your advice

Dmitry from DMDE software replied to my email almost instantly and advised that 'It seems some values are beyond the worst bounds'.

He then refunded my order and apologised for not being able to help more. Fantastic service. Very few companies offer this kind of service after you have purchased an application.

Although the script didn't work for me this time, having tried over a dozen applications I can say that it was the most effective. I'd recommend it to anyone who is looking to recover lost files.

 

Had the same problem a while back, I used PC rescue to clone then scan the clone drive. I managed to recover ~120gb but not the other 200 or so that was on a 500drive. It was a while back, from memory I stopped the clone some time into because the estimated time frame jumped to 500hrs or more, bad sectors I presumed. I recovered a lot of info but for me it was not the important baby home videos that I did not back up. I now have double back ups of important stuff and recommend everyone do the same(at least 1). I'm going to try Norton ghost to attempt clone since I got it free with an ssd I purchased(when I could be bothered). If that doesn't work I'll try format then recovery. PC rescue seemed to do a gd job as I used it also on a memory card. However there is possibly free software that will do the same.

 

The above posts has been pretty typical of the results from software recovery. Sometimes you get lucky on a file or two, but worth the effort. Crashed platters and weak sectors can only be read by expensive hardware recovery where platers are removed.

Where would this leave us with failed SSD drives?

After my first IDE drive crash, back ups became routine.

 

Yeah it's taught me to always have backups. I normally do. When it crashed I was in the process of uploading all files to Dropbox. Online storage is the way forward

 

Where do you think the final destination of online storage is? (Hint: HDD's).

A proper backup is to multiple devices in multiple locations in non-identical solutions (i.e., don't use WD products exclusively).

While online storage can fulfill one of the above requirements, it doesn't absolve you from having other (preferably multiple) points of redundancy.

Myself, I normally backup to up to a dozen or more different devices daily (depending on the client, the uniqueness of the project (I do shoots - i.e., 'images') and the location I happen to be at that time.

 

Yeah I'm aware it's backed up on HDDs. I'm backpacking through south america just now. I'm using dropbox to backup all my photos and videos (as well as important files for my websites). On the road, I'm backing up my photos on my laptop and a thumb drive. It's simply not practical to do backups to a dozen locations.

 

I agree 100% (not always practical to do backup to a dozen devices...)...

However, my main point is that a backup to a single device/location/service is NOT a backup at all.

(At least use multiple online storage services and even multiple thumb drives (which I would be mailing to myself, regularly/daily).

 

Hey Mister,, its along time.. Let me help U , but i don't know if u've already solved ur probs..
Try this.. " Hiren's Boot CD" Google it and download the ISO files, burn it to CD or USB drive..

Use Hiren's Boot cd, Boot - Hard Disk Regenerator Or Under testing tools >> Hard Disk testing tools to fix Ur bad Sector,,
After fixing for an hour , Reboot again from Hiren's Boot cd...Use Acronis Partition tools... Try to Recover Unallocated Partition.. Maybe fix or Used Ur previous Recovery Softwares...

Thanks... See if Ur lucy... Many of my Work is done wit this method...