Anyway to rescue data off failing Seagate drive?

[pjny]

Hi,

My friend's cannot access the data on his Seagate 4tb drive SRDOSDO formatted NTFS. When he plugs it in it takes 2-3 min to show up on the desktop. I plugged it into my Macbook(Yosemite 10.10.3) and a warning states computer cannot recognize the disk and it needs to be initialized. I think

I ran Prosoft Data Rescue 3.2. deep scan overnight and got numerous errors stating that due to slow disk reads stating drive might be failing. I decided to clone the drive(recommended) to another external 5tb Seagate.

I set energy saver to not turn off the laptop but am not sure if my computer's lock screen stopped the operation. After 10 hours I logged back on and the program seemed to have stalled in terms of progress bar was not changing(megabytes saved).

I was thinking of running Steve Gibson's Spinrite but don't have a desktop to attach the drive to after removing the internal drive from the case(it's very difficult).

I hear some weird noises when Prosoft was running. the strange thing is the drive will, at times, be recognized by Yosemite but I cannot copy the files over due to an error(displayed below). I managed to copy about 400mb of his family photos but that was it. I cannot seem to get the macbook to recognize the drive.

Is there any program that might be able to rescurrect thisi drive.

If not, can you suggest any other options? He can't afford Drivesavers.

Thanks.

 

[monokakata]

If you have time to order something, try this (or equivalent) USB drive kit:

http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-CB-ISA...&qid=1435900875&sr=8-6&keywords=usb+drive+kit

You wouldn't need a desktop. You can just cable it all up and the bare drive looks like an ordinary USB drive to whatever computer you attach it to. It's a very handy thing to have, so even if you can't solve the disk problem, you'll have a useful tool.

 

[Detrius]

Look into ddrescue. It's a command line data recovery program that you can use to make a disk image of a failed drive. When it runs into bad sections, it skips them and comes back later to try again. You can use it to clone to another drive if you don't have space for a full image, but I'd recommend doing it to an image. Be sure you take advantage of the option for it to store its current progress to a file so that if things stop recovering well, you can tweak it's behavior (or at least pick up again where it left off).

Once that's done, then run Prosoft's Data Rescue on the image, not the original bad drive. Other options at this point include mounting the image manually with a secondary file that has the changes so that you don't have to modify the master to do recovery. Running Disk Warrior on the image can also potentially be useful.

It's been years since I've done this, so my memory is rusty, but that's a start.

 

[Partron22]

"Seagate 4tb drive SRDOSDO formatted NTFS."
That's a SATA drive, right?
It might be the interface rather than the drive itself failing.
I'd pull the drive and put it in a known good enclosure.

 

[pjny]

Its one of the seagate drives where you can remove the bottom part which houses power/usb port and allows you to attach the drive to a Seagate Thunderbolt dock. I had no luck with prosoft using this method.

"Seagate 4tb drive SRDOSDO formatted NTFS."
That's a SATA drive, right?
It might be the interface rather than the drive itself failing.
I'd pull the drive and put it in a known good enclosure.

 

[pjny]

Thanks, Detrius. I will try this.

Look into ddrescue. It's a command line data recovery program that you can use to make a disk image of a failed drive. When it runs into bad sections, it skips them and comes back later to try again. You can use it to clone to another drive if you don't have space for a full image, but I'd recommend doing it to an image. Be sure you take advantage of the option for it to store its current progress to a file so that if things stop recovering well, you can tweak it's behavior (or at least pick up again where it left off).

Once that's done, then run Prosoft's Data Rescue on the image, not the original bad drive. Other options at this point include mounting the image manually with a secondary file that has the changes so that you don't have to modify the master to do recovery. Running Disk Warrior on the image can also potentially be useful.

It's been years since I've done this, so my memory is rusty, but that's a start.

 

[Detrius]

I missed the part where it was formatted NTFS. Disk Warrior won't help you with that, but you can still potentially use Windows tools on the image you've recovered via ddrescue.

 

[DeltaMac]

...
I was thinking of running Steve Gibson's Spinrite but don't have a desktop to attach the drive to after removing the internal drive from the case(it's very difficult).
...

Keep thinking about Spinrite, (maybe even try it ) probably your best repair/scan tool for an NTFS formatted drive. After that, comes a data recovery service.

 

[pjny]

I tried spinrite and for some reason it won't recognize the drive. I am running spinrite off a boot internal CD-ROM. I connected the drive via USB 3 but it isn't seen by the system. Can anyone recommend a Spinrite alternative which doesnt require booting into DOS? Thanks.

 

[DeltaMac]

Spinrite won't recognize the drive?
Are you trying that on a Windows PC - or a Mac? If a Mac, be sure to try a PC. You may want to be sure that the PC motherboard can properly support a larger drive like that.
Spinrite support is pretty responsive - you may want to call or email them, with specifics about the drive, and the results that you get. The 4TB drive is still a little unusual, and may need different techniques for recovery to work properly.
But, Spinrite not recognizing the drive at all ... and I suspect that your drive is beyond user-level tools.
I think your alternative is now a data recovery service.
Be prepared to spend some money.
You can call these guys - they will offer you a quote
You can also check in your local area for data recovery services. Some shops can be quite good (so I have heard), but it is some luck to be located in the right community for some of the top shops.
Good luck!

 

[Fishrrman]

If your friend cannot afford a data recovery service (and they are VERY expensive for a drive of that size), your best option is pretty much to do as you've already done.

That is, get whatever you can get off the drive, and let it go at that.

Final, last-ditch approach:
IF you can get the drive to re-initialize, do that (re-initialize to a single partition) and THEN try to run data recovery software (such as DataRescue) on it.

Doing this worked for me when nothing else would, and I got pretty much all of what I wanted to get from the problem drive.

One other thing...
GENTLY give your friend some advice about the concept of "backing up" his data in the future.
He'll need two drives and either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper...