Can't Recover Files From RAW 2 Tb WD HDD

Using TestDisk to undelete files
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jpresstone
Posts: 4
Joined: 12 Mar 2016, 14:24

Can't Recover Files From RAW 2 Tb WD HDD

#1 Post by jpresstone »

I've been at this for a week now and I've made no headway and have tried half a dozen other programs that all fail to recover anything.

So last week I had a power supply going out that would automatically restart my computer over and over. Turns out one of the plastic covers on the pin connector melted inside the motherboard socket so I had to replace that connector but as I couldn't extract the melted plastic from the motherboard I also had to replace that. I'm assuming the power failing is what cause my hard drive to fail. There are no clicks or odd noises. WDC Active SMART says my disk is healthy but doesn't display how much space is used.

Tried to access my hard drive, windows wants to format it, disk management shows RAW. I'm screwed, I'm a musician, all my music and plugins were on that drive. I was in the middle of recording an album and now that's all gone. This isn't your friend's mom's hard drive filled with a bunch of crappy photos of her cats. This is important work to me. Cutting my losses is not an option. I need this back.

Scoured the internet searching symptoms and was led to Testdisk as a solution. Read all the instructions carefully, looked through countless forums seeing how others have solved their various problems, but none of them seem to match mine. All I need is to get the files off the drive in their original form. I don't care about the drive itself, just the content.
testdisk 1.JPG
testdisk 1.JPG (118.33 KiB) Viewed 4351 times
Everyone else seems to only have one or 2 drives to select from. All of my drives seem to show up twice. I know it's drive F: I'm after and I know the size should be 2000 GB/1863 GiB. I've tried both options. Selection Disk /dev/sdc - 2000 GB/ 1863 GiB detects Intel/PC. Quick search finds nothing. I tried selecting advanced, boot.
testdisk 2.JPG
testdisk 2.JPG (77 KiB) Viewed 4351 times
Try to rebuild BS, no FAT found, searches subdirectory, can't find cluster size.
Try undelete
undelete.JPG
undelete.JPG (165.34 KiB) Viewed 4351 times
None of this looks like what I need. Why does it think its FAT16? The hard drive was NTFS.
Ok lets try changing the Type to NTFS and try to boot.
Boot sector: Bad
Backup boot sector: Bad
Sectors are not Identical.
Can't list, file system seems damaged.
Same with undelete.

Ok let's try to se whats going on with Drive F:
Defaults to non partitioned, which makes sense to me since it is currently RAW.
Basically Same options and results.
Go back and select Intel, advanced, no partition available.
Basically I feel like I've tried everything except messing with the geometry.
I've tried other recovery programs, EaseUs gave me a bunch of useless RAW files. At least I know the data is there somewhere, I just need to make it readable.
Tried ZAR, MiniToo Power Data Recovery, GetDataBack. GDB actually seemed to be working, found thousands of files but crapped out once the scan finished. I might try booting Linux and running ddrescue but I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to that.
I don't really know what else to try at this point so here I am asking for help. How can I get my data back? I've got a 3tb hard drive just waiting for the files to be dumping into once I actually figure this out. Am I missing something simple or is this a big problem?

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cgrenier
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Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 15:08
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Re: Can't Recover Files From RAW 2 Tb WD HDD

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Run TestDisk, in Advanced, set the partition type to NTFS, Boot, RebuildBS, List. If you can see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit.

jpresstone
Posts: 4
Joined: 12 Mar 2016, 14:24

Re: Can't Recover Files From RAW 2 Tb WD HDD

#3 Post by jpresstone »

When I try to rebuild BS I get "cant find cluster size" as the result.

jpresstone
Posts: 4
Joined: 12 Mar 2016, 14:24

Re: Can't Recover Files From RAW 2 Tb WD HDD

#4 Post by jpresstone »

I just tried
disk /dev/sdc - 2000gb/1863 gib
Intel/pc
Advanced
Type
07 HPFS - NTFS
Boot

Boot sector:Bad
Backup bootsector: bad

Sectors are not identical

Rebuild BS

Boot sector:Bad
Backup boosector: bad

Sectors are not identical
A valid NTFS Boot sector must be present in order to access any data; even if the partition is not bootable.

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cgrenier
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Posts: 5432
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 15:08
Location: Le Perreux Sur Marne, France
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Re: Can't Recover Files From RAW 2 Tb WD HDD

#5 Post by cgrenier »

If TestDisk failed, you can always try PhotoRec on the whole space of this partition but recovered files will not have their original filenames.

jpresstone
Posts: 4
Joined: 12 Mar 2016, 14:24

Re: Can't Recover Files From RAW 2 Tb WD HDD

#6 Post by jpresstone »

The files not being restored to their original file names is as about as good to me as throwing this hard drive into the sun. And from what I can see of the file types that photorec recovers, it doesnt even look for half of what I need it to. I use Reaper which uses reaper project files .rpp. I used Cinema 4d which used .c4d files. I need all the wav files to be intact so all my songs can be rebuilt correctly. It needs to know all the plugin .dll files. This is not going to work for me.

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