dropped HDD?

I have an external 2.5 HDD . Two days ago , i dropped it from my desk.
Today , i can not copy some of the files from HDD to another HDD. it looks like partially broken.
Now i will backup whatever i can. After that what should i do?
is there a way to use it again completely and how? how can i use just the good parts of HDD?
which programs should i use for these operations?

thanks for any help

 

If you trust it after a hard fall like that (which obviously affected the data), you might want to run chkdsk /f /r on it to mark the bad sectors and thereby not let Windows use the bad parts of the drive. This will take a while and it might even save some of your data that you now cannot access too.

If you value your data though, I highly recommend getting a replacement HD instead of using this one.

Either way, Good luck and Happy Holidays!

 

Was the drive on or off?

If it was off it might still be useable - but I really only suggest it for something like temp files - I wouldn't trust it.

Also, use CrystalDiskInfo to read the SMART data.

 

Yep, if it was off it might still be usable.

You could try sending it in and seeing if it's still under warranty, I've done that a couple of times with the internal hard drives of an external enclosure (leave the enclosure at home, send in the hard drive)

 

Even if it was on or off, given that the OP has already had issues with some data on the HD, it took a very serious hit.

The warranty idea is good, but keep in mind that most manufacturers just give a refurbished HD in return, I would sell that and still get a brand new one, myself. Again, how important is the data being stored?

 

well , it looks great idea, it was an internal hdd, it's still warranty, so if it gives me trouble i will send it, thanks..

it was on, tomorrow i will format , then i will chkdrive then i will decide what to do.

 

right it looks that it took serious hit.

the data are not so important, there were some good movies , i will download again.

but i will try warranty,
i would not sell it somebody without telling him the truth , so nobody will give a big deal for this HDD.

sorry for double posting​

 

after 8 or 9 hours , it is still working on it

i did not format it in case i may recover some files after chkdisk.

So what does that mean? i dont think it is normal that it is still working on it
but number of the processed files increase like a turtle.

 

8 to 9 hours is a lot - but its not a very fast process - and then, if its an external drive via USB that will slow it down too.

Keep it running - and how large is it?

I think on an internal 250GB drive (which was in a good condition) it took maybe 1 to 2 hours... at least that's if I remember correctly.

 

it is an hitachi 5K 320.
i have also a seagate 7200.3 320gb , it dropped several times, but nothing happened like that.
that's weird, i guess seagate never took such a hit.

 

It can also depend on how full the drive is, how fragmented it's become, the average size of the files - lots of things.

I say, as long as it thinks it's making progress, let it go. My dad had a 99% full eek: it was that way constantly for 3 years!) 80Gig hard drive in his work laptop, and just restoring to a system restore point in XP took ~4.5 hours.

Not to mention it's on USB, so you're limited not just by the drive's speed/latency, but the speed of the USB bus as well.

Is it making any appreciable progress? IE- Can you see the number of files "checked" increasing?

 

Well, USB 2.0 doesn't traditionally limit HDDs.

 

yes , it increased by 100 files after that picture, so it is showing "14715 files processed"

 

Not to a great extent, no, but it's only rated for 60MB/S or so BURST, and I've observed steady state transfers of 30-45 MB/S or less, depending on how many things I have going on.

SATA II is in the range of HUNDREDS of MB/S sustained. There is a difference, but I'm not sure it will make a real world difference in the operation the OP is performing. I was just throwing it out there as a possibility.

EDIT- Well, if it's making progress I'd just let it go for as long as possible. :/

 

-it was not fragmanted
-there was just 40 gb free of 320
-most of the files were of big size.
-it was on

i guess i have the worst case

 

Oof. Good luck with that. If you get tired of waiting for it, you could always run Acronis or HDClone and try to pull everything off of it onto another drive and then write this one off.

 

You're best off trying to get as much data off as possible first, as you'll have the best chance if you try that first.

If it's an internal hard drive you bought and subsequently stuffed in an enclosure, you definitely have more options. I would actually try to recover the drive in a desktop computer if you have access to one, or even eSATA. I wouldn't try it in the enclosure (as it could be the enclosure that's bad). Then, figure out the manufacturer of the drive, and run their diagnostic tool. This is your best bet, and you can't really do this in the enclosure, as well. Don't bother with a windows disk check. If this utility reports errors, but claims it recovered something, or "fixed it", try to extract your files again. I actually had some success with this technique when my WD Raptor had unreadible sectors and caused my server to BSOD. I wasn't able to recover my Hyper-V partition image file (single file 0about 30GB in size) until after I ran their tool to correct it. I still sent the drive in though as it failed a SMART test. Of course, I didn't drop this drive and a potential head crash is far more catastrophic.


Finally bear in mind that some HDD manufacturers put ion accelerometers that can tell if the drive you send back has sustained a shock such as that from a drop. If this is the case and the drive notes it when you return it, they could easily refuse the warranty exchange, and they will also say it too in their warranty terms.

 

I have to disagree with most of the above, sorry everyone!

If you're running this through USB, then yeah, it will take some days.

To clone an 50GB HD through USB took me over 3 hrs - with eSata (effectively the same speed as an internal connection to the MB) took all of ten minutes.

Don't forget what chkdsk is doing is effectively defragging the drive in the sense that data is moved from one specific location (the 'bad' clusters) and relocated to known good clusters. Doing that over USB is a test of your patience.

Also, don't forget that on the 'bad' clusters, it is reading them over and over until it is fairly certain that the data its reading is accurate - USB slows this part down dramatically!

Still, I would not interrupt this scan and I would not stop it to 'get the data off' - some of the data is corrupted right now, might as well try to save as much of it as possible, then get it to a good HD.

 

you are absolutely right that it looks to take like a week

and i failed the test and i just copied whatever i can and now i am formatting it

 

i took 3 hours + to format a 1TB external drive using e-SATA... why does it take so long??? Anyways i hope your drive is working now.

 

sean473,

You didn't do a quick format? lol...

Yeah, if you do a full format (uncheck the 'Quick Format' option), this sounds about right (3+ hrs), but I haven't done a full format on a HD for about 8 or 9 years!

 

now i have it formatted and checkdisked (said errors fixed).

and i am copying so many hd movies to hdd.
then i will copy them from hdd to another hdd to test it is safe to use it.

do you know a better way to test it?

edit:
by the way its performance is decreased obviously since the speed is around 15mb/s
and it gave me errors when i was copying a big file to again in itself

should not chckdisk fix or cover those badsectors?
and i realized that chckdisk just tries to fix files if there is a file,
if there is no file it does not even bother, am i wrong?

 

With both checkboxes checked (or running chkdsk /f /r), it should check both data and free space on the drive and mark it accordingly.

With the continuing errors you are getting, I would be extremely hesitant to continue using this HD. Sounds like chkdsk used up all the (spare) clusters to fix as much as it could on the normal part of the platter, but it did not have enough (spare) to mark them all bad.

 

hey, guys

i used HDD regeneration and it found 164 bad sectors and it said 140 of them recovered.

anyway, i saw that all bad sectors are consecutive sectors,
so if i can partition it manually then i may have another good partition.
How can i do that? does that sound good?

edit: i know which sectors are bad

 

i gave up to recover it
it is like a pain.
i will send to warranty service.

 

mesarmath,

sounds like the best approach. With 24 sectors not recovered, it may really have used all the 'spare' it had making it very unreliable even if you could partition it to avoid the bad sectors completely (any future bad sectors would not be able to be marked as bad, therefore making the whole drive undependable).

Hope you have better luck with the replacement.

Cheers!

 

Hard drives are cheap I won't even bother with all this recoverying crap.

 

yeah i know, i wish SSD is too

i already bought a 7K 500 a week ago which was the day i got nervous about my dropped HDD.
and as tilleroftheearth said , i will sell the new 5K 320 if warranty service give me another one for the broken HDD.
(i guess they will )