Won the Data Recovery Lottery Today

[NETWizz]

I won the Data Recovery lottery today...

Had a USB hard drive plugged into my SmartTV for a few years not thinking anything of it... Then I went to play something from it, and it did not work! I have been meaning to upgrade it to Flash, but none the less... I decided to take a look, so I remove this old Western Digital Passport 250 GB unit, which has an ACTUAL 2.5" Laptop hard drive from like 2006 in it!

I plug it into a computer, and get a drive letter that is inaccessible... Doh. Look in Disk Management and see this treasure... Ignore F: (That's a memory stick). Disk 1 is the Culprit! RAW. DOH!



I looked in SMART and saw this treasure... (I guess one (1) pending sector isn't that bad...)



What amazes me is that CHKDSK actually fixed it! It is currently at least mountable...




Copying the data to new media...

 

[lcoughey]

Yup. You got real lucky. chkdsk is horrible for losing data by deleting "corrupt" records. I get recoveries here all the time after someone has already run chkdsk and am left to explain that the only hope to find a missing accounting file is by a RAW recovery searching for the file signatures without any file or folder names to reference.

 

[NETWizz]

Yup. You got real lucky. chkdsk is horrible for losing data by deleting "corrupt" records. I get recoveries here all the time after someone has already run chkdsk and am left to explain that the only hope to find a missing accounting file is by a RAW recovery searching for the file signatures without any file or folder names to reference.

I was thinking I might be running Recuva, which of course would have random file names probably.

 

[lcoughey]

I was thinking I might be running Recuva, which of course would have random file names probably.

Recuva is garbage in my opinion. At best, it is only designed to recover deleted files via emptying the recycle bin.

The first thing that should have been done is to get a clone of the drive. Then run a good data recovery program against the clone.

Garbage: Stellar, Easeus, Recuva, MiniTool, Disk Drill
Professional: UFS Explorer/R-Explorer, R-Studio, GetDataBack, File Scavenger, Reclaime

 

[britechguy]

I've also had great luck with Test Disk and, when absolutely necessary, Photo Rec.

 

[NETWizz]

I've also had great luck with Test Disk and, when absolutely necessary, Photo Rec.

I have had luck with Photo Rex and Test Disk too ironically... not for photos.

 

[britechguy]

Photo Rec is really poorly named, and I have no idea why that has not been remedied over the years. It recovers virtually any file type you can name [and do you ever want to limit the file type(s) if you can, as this is the "utility of last resort" that will get you scads of duplicate and that does not retain original file names.]

 

[Joep]

I find it rather surprising that a pro wouldn't use some pro data recovery software.

 

[glennd]

You will be extemporated.

So long as you clean it up when you're finished!