WD My Book Essential 2TB Analyse Question
Posted: 11 Sep 2015, 01:43
Hi.
I have a WD My Book Essential 2TB that I store my media in (i.e. not bootable). As far as I can remember, I used it right out of the box without anything done to it (e.g. change file system, format, partitioned). It has always been very slow to load before; whenever I open it in Windows explorer, the drive would take about 5 minutes to load before I can explore it's contents but it wasn't something I could not deal with.
Recently, the drive could not be detected by my computer (Windows 7 32-bit). I did nothing to it; I did not move it, I did not unplug it, nothing. It just wasn't showing up in the drive list. I tried plugging it in an old Windows XP laptop and it could not be detected. I don't have a linux computer so I couldn't test it there. Having no alternative and thinking it might be the drive's case/interface that's causing the problem, I opened it and placed it in an HDD bay. After plugging it in, my Win7 PC could detect the drive, albeit in a RAW partition with the usual prompts of 'Do you want to format the drive?'.
I just restarted my pc, unplugged and plugged the HDD bay, and changed the disk's position in the hdd bay but it did not change its RAW status (I know this wouldn't work I was just being optimistic that all it needed was a few nudges here and there). So I search the web and found testdisk.
I followed the steps on how to use test disk but I have come to a part that deviates from the expected behavior. After anaylsing (quick search) the disk, I could see that it found some files. However, what's different is that the file names of the files that testdisk found are unreadable (e.g. jv083htn24t2b4trdnfli). I tried searching for a reason for this but could not find any with similar experiences (that or I am bad at searching the web or have an incredibly low iq). I did not attempt a deep search yet as I know that takes a loooooong time and I don't want to try it until I know that there's nothing else wrong with my disk.
I've attached screenshots and the log file of my testdisk run. This is my 3rd run of testdisk and I have gone nowhere. The first run is similar to the one I described in this post, which I ended since I didn't know what to do. The second run was using the Advance setting where I rebuild the boot sector which I did based on a few posts here in the forum. I thought it would just run for a day or a day and half at most so I tried this instead of deep search. The problem with that run is that it was stuck at 25~% for 3 days. I forgot to make a backup of the log for that run so I can't provide it here. Then finally, this third run which had the same results as the first run.
I have also tried using another recovery program (easus, I think) and though it was able to list a few files that might have been my files, it did so with undecipherable file names and types; what I expect was an MP4 file was turned into an SWF file. Upon downloading one of this SWF file, it could not be opened and had an error message of being corrupted.
As a side note, I've mentioned I did nothing whatsoever to the drive prior to using it. I kind of expected the file system to either be NTFS or FAT32 but testdisk seems to detect it as FAT16. I don't know if that is because my disk is FAT16 or there is an underlying problem with it. I have media files as large as 10GB on the drive and as far as I know, that's not possible on FAT file systems (I could be wrong but that has always been the reason why my flash drives are all NTFS as I could not save files larger than 4GB on it when I left it at it's default FAT32).
Can anyone please advise on what I am seeing during my testdisk run? Is there anything else that I can do to recover my files in testdisk before I resort to photorec or other methods? Thanks!
P.S. I've upload the files in a ZIP file. I don't know how to use the BBcode. I am sorry, I am an idiot.
I have a WD My Book Essential 2TB that I store my media in (i.e. not bootable). As far as I can remember, I used it right out of the box without anything done to it (e.g. change file system, format, partitioned). It has always been very slow to load before; whenever I open it in Windows explorer, the drive would take about 5 minutes to load before I can explore it's contents but it wasn't something I could not deal with.
Recently, the drive could not be detected by my computer (Windows 7 32-bit). I did nothing to it; I did not move it, I did not unplug it, nothing. It just wasn't showing up in the drive list. I tried plugging it in an old Windows XP laptop and it could not be detected. I don't have a linux computer so I couldn't test it there. Having no alternative and thinking it might be the drive's case/interface that's causing the problem, I opened it and placed it in an HDD bay. After plugging it in, my Win7 PC could detect the drive, albeit in a RAW partition with the usual prompts of 'Do you want to format the drive?'.
I just restarted my pc, unplugged and plugged the HDD bay, and changed the disk's position in the hdd bay but it did not change its RAW status (I know this wouldn't work I was just being optimistic that all it needed was a few nudges here and there). So I search the web and found testdisk.
I followed the steps on how to use test disk but I have come to a part that deviates from the expected behavior. After anaylsing (quick search) the disk, I could see that it found some files. However, what's different is that the file names of the files that testdisk found are unreadable (e.g. jv083htn24t2b4trdnfli). I tried searching for a reason for this but could not find any with similar experiences (that or I am bad at searching the web or have an incredibly low iq). I did not attempt a deep search yet as I know that takes a loooooong time and I don't want to try it until I know that there's nothing else wrong with my disk.
I've attached screenshots and the log file of my testdisk run. This is my 3rd run of testdisk and I have gone nowhere. The first run is similar to the one I described in this post, which I ended since I didn't know what to do. The second run was using the Advance setting where I rebuild the boot sector which I did based on a few posts here in the forum. I thought it would just run for a day or a day and half at most so I tried this instead of deep search. The problem with that run is that it was stuck at 25~% for 3 days. I forgot to make a backup of the log for that run so I can't provide it here. Then finally, this third run which had the same results as the first run.
I have also tried using another recovery program (easus, I think) and though it was able to list a few files that might have been my files, it did so with undecipherable file names and types; what I expect was an MP4 file was turned into an SWF file. Upon downloading one of this SWF file, it could not be opened and had an error message of being corrupted.
As a side note, I've mentioned I did nothing whatsoever to the drive prior to using it. I kind of expected the file system to either be NTFS or FAT32 but testdisk seems to detect it as FAT16. I don't know if that is because my disk is FAT16 or there is an underlying problem with it. I have media files as large as 10GB on the drive and as far as I know, that's not possible on FAT file systems (I could be wrong but that has always been the reason why my flash drives are all NTFS as I could not save files larger than 4GB on it when I left it at it's default FAT32).
Can anyone please advise on what I am seeing during my testdisk run? Is there anything else that I can do to recover my files in testdisk before I resort to photorec or other methods? Thanks!
P.S. I've upload the files in a ZIP file. I don't know how to use the BBcode. I am sorry, I am an idiot.