I Messed Up

[TraitorVic]

I'm dealing with a Western Digital 5TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive that stopped functioning a bit over a year ago. It is about 4/5 full with a single partition.

Learned of TestDisk only this year and decided to give (TestDisk-7.2-WIP) it a shot. When I first tried to access the drive I was able to access the lost data and was able to copy some of the files. Tried accessing single folders so as to not bog the system down any more than necessary and to give opportunities to re-organize the data that was saved as I worked.

Found data recovery to be highly successful but a bit slow. Read documentation that suggested that TestDisk was unable to recover data from Deleted Partitions and instructed to identify those as Primary in order to proceed successfully. I wasn't sure which type of partition I was dealing with to begin with and, so, used the Right/Left Arrow Keys to specify P)rimary, thinking that: A - It might speed things up, and B - I can always switch back if this doesn't work. Read later, too late perhaps, that TestDisk is NOW ABLE to restore data from a number of different types of partitions that is in the D)eleted state.

Since identifying the single partition on the drive as P)rimary neither TestDisk or Photorec are able to recognize the partition. Quick Search doesn't find anything and a Full Alternate GPT Search immediately reports numerous read failures, exponentially growing the Log File and completing only as far as 20% over a 48 Hour Period, at which point a Winter Weather Power Failure stopped the process. The resulting Log File was well over a single terabyte in size.

Any Log Files created so far have been too large to open and/or edit and, thusly, deleted (save for the current documents which are Quite Large).

I've also found that I'm no longer able to choose between P)rimary and D)eleted. How can a program identify the type of any partition that you can't identify?

Is there a way to restore the D)eleted designation to the existing partition/files? Or have I destroyed any chance of accessing those files that I did not recover before messin' everything up?

Please let me know of any further information that I can provide.

Allow me to state that I Deeply Appreciate these programs and the power that they provide even though I haven't exactly used them (entirely) correctly so far.

[recuperation]

Please post your log file using the last TestDisk version 7.2-WIP.

Please post your smartmontools log file:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10910

[TraitorVic]

Thanks so much for that information!

smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-w10-22H2] (sf-7.4-1)
Copyright (C) 2002-23, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Elements / My Passport (USB, AF)
Device Model: WDC WD50NDZW-11A8JS1
Serial Number: WD-WX62DC0D232D
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2be7f5858
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity: 5,000,947,523,584 bytes [5.00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 5400 rpm
Form Factor: 2.5 inches
TRIM Command: Available, deterministic
Device is: In smartctl database 7.3/5528
ATA Version is: ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
SATA Version is: SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Fri Jan 26 19:03:19 2024 EST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.
See vendor-specific Attribute list for failed Attributes.

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 9780) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x1b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
No Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 130) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x30b5) SCT Status supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 001 001 051 Pre-fail Always FAILING_NOW 73549
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 253 253 021 Pre-fail Always - 4066
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 753
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 082 082 000 Old_age Always - 13846
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 289
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 210
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 193 193 000 Old_age Always - 22037
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 108 105 000 Old_age Always - 44
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 480
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: unknown failure 90% 13627 -
# 2 Short offline Completed: unknown failure 90% 13626 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 7932 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 7189 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4345 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3606 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2607 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1889 -
# 9 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1146 -
#10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 429 -

Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

The above only provides legacy SMART information - try 'smartctl -x' for more

[recuperation]

smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-w10-22H2] (sf-7.4-1)
...
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
...
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 001 001 051 Pre-fail Always FAILING_NOW 73549
...
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 480
...
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error

# 1 Short offline Completed: unknown failure 90% 13627 -
# 2 Short offline Completed: unknown failure 90% 13626 -

# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 7932 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 7189 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4345 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3606 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2607 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1889 -
# 9 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1146 -
#10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 429 -

Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

Your disk is dying. You can try to duplicate the disk as described in the manual.
That is even more justified as your disk is 4/5 full as you pointed out luckily.
I would give ddrescue a try.

If you are not using its write functions you could run TestDisk against the duplicate.
Otherwise I would recommend you duplicating the duplicate and continue "playing" with the second duplicate.

Applying any data recovery program to your disk in this state is stressing your disk even more.
DDrescue will try to read out your disk in a linear fashion as longs as there are no read errors. It will try to jump over these errors further reducing the stress of any regular file-level access. Later on, it will deal with the left unread zones that contain one or more errors.

As for the overly long TestDisk log file you can use a free hex editor like HxD to extract the first 10 kBytes of your long log Testdisk file and post it here.

[TraitorVic]

Yep… That's what I thought the report suggested.

At least TestDisk helped me to recover some of the most important files that are on a Dying Disk!

Thank you so much for your assistance and advice.