Harddrive RAW
Posted: 06 Sep 2014, 16:36
Hello All,
I am not anywhere near what most of you would call computer savy, just interested. I used to build my own computers but that is child's play compared to most of you. If you have the time and will to help educate me I would greatly appreciate it. I am trying to repair an external harddrive, I think all my critical files are elsewhere (there are just files I would enjoy to have back) but primarily I would like to learn how to do this as I find it fascinating. Do not worry if I am not worth your time, just an enthusiast hoping someone likes to teach as I do (in other subjects).
I have a WD 3TB ext harddrive, it began having access issues so I ran a CHKDSK on it and indeed it found bad sectors (no noises to suggest a head / disk trauma) and was in the middle of the BITMAP repair when the program was unintentionally interrupted. From then on it was no longer even recognized by my laptop computers USB port.
I then took apart the cover and placed it into a desktop of mine (I believe SATA, the thin wire, not IDE cables). I am now able to see the disk on Disk manager and windows explorer sees it as well but of course cannot access it. Disk manager shows a partition 1.9GB healthy and another ~800 "unallocated". Actvating the harddrive has no effect on accessing it, and CHKDSK reads the harddrive as RAW. I attempted TEST DISC, it does see the harddrive but only sees 764GB (I have been able to determine that to be a common error with large HD but do not know what to do about it). I tried to have testdisk analyse the harddrive (no writing or trying to recover data as it says that would be bad) and the analyse wants to run through 954K cylinders. At the pace I see it proceeding that procedure would take weeks.
My only desktop is a windows XP computer I use as a media center, all my primary work is done on laptops (much more up to date) but unfortunately I can just hook up a harddrive to it like I would a desktop and as said above the USB was not working.
Is there anything any of you can suggest or teach me on this forum? I know I can just take it to Geek squad or something, but I really would like to learn more about this process. I am not to concerned if I make things worse.
I am not anywhere near what most of you would call computer savy, just interested. I used to build my own computers but that is child's play compared to most of you. If you have the time and will to help educate me I would greatly appreciate it. I am trying to repair an external harddrive, I think all my critical files are elsewhere (there are just files I would enjoy to have back) but primarily I would like to learn how to do this as I find it fascinating. Do not worry if I am not worth your time, just an enthusiast hoping someone likes to teach as I do (in other subjects).
I have a WD 3TB ext harddrive, it began having access issues so I ran a CHKDSK on it and indeed it found bad sectors (no noises to suggest a head / disk trauma) and was in the middle of the BITMAP repair when the program was unintentionally interrupted. From then on it was no longer even recognized by my laptop computers USB port.
I then took apart the cover and placed it into a desktop of mine (I believe SATA, the thin wire, not IDE cables). I am now able to see the disk on Disk manager and windows explorer sees it as well but of course cannot access it. Disk manager shows a partition 1.9GB healthy and another ~800 "unallocated". Actvating the harddrive has no effect on accessing it, and CHKDSK reads the harddrive as RAW. I attempted TEST DISC, it does see the harddrive but only sees 764GB (I have been able to determine that to be a common error with large HD but do not know what to do about it). I tried to have testdisk analyse the harddrive (no writing or trying to recover data as it says that would be bad) and the analyse wants to run through 954K cylinders. At the pace I see it proceeding that procedure would take weeks.
My only desktop is a windows XP computer I use as a media center, all my primary work is done on laptops (much more up to date) but unfortunately I can just hook up a harddrive to it like I would a desktop and as said above the USB was not working.
Is there anything any of you can suggest or teach me on this forum? I know I can just take it to Geek squad or something, but I really would like to learn more about this process. I am not to concerned if I make things worse.