TestDisk does not see my attached drive
Posted: 03 Oct 2023, 15:09
I have a Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD which has been the C:/ on my personal PC (Dell Inspiron 3668) for a little over four years. I turned on the machine yesterday to find it booting into Support Assist Mode where it concluded that the SSD had gone bad (Incorrect Status = 32 and Error Code: 2000-0151). I was surprised that it just dropped dead overnight like that, but I guess I have seen that kind of thing in my years working at a help desk.
I tried a few reboots to see if anything could get it to boot, but no luck. I bought a new 870 EVO 2TB drive and installed Windows 10. I tried to hook up the 860 to my Unitek HDD reader, but that wouldn't register anything on the new PC. I can see the Samsung 860 EVO drive in Device Manager, but in Disk Management, it is not initialized, and I cannot get it to initialize whether I choose MBR or GPT because of an I/O error. I also tried on our family PC, but I got similar errors.
I used the Linux rescue disk from Reddit's r/TechSupport group and got some feedback that no partitions were being detected. You can see it as SDC here.

After downloading and running TestDisk, I did not make it very far as the drive does not show up. All I see is my current 2TB Samsung EVO in my PC and the 8TB storage drive. The 860 EVO is attached via USB and I can see it in Device Manager.


Is there anything more I can do ay this point to get the drive to be used with TestDisk? Or are there alternative recovery methods I might try?
I tried a few reboots to see if anything could get it to boot, but no luck. I bought a new 870 EVO 2TB drive and installed Windows 10. I tried to hook up the 860 to my Unitek HDD reader, but that wouldn't register anything on the new PC. I can see the Samsung 860 EVO drive in Device Manager, but in Disk Management, it is not initialized, and I cannot get it to initialize whether I choose MBR or GPT because of an I/O error. I also tried on our family PC, but I got similar errors.
I used the Linux rescue disk from Reddit's r/TechSupport group and got some feedback that no partitions were being detected. You can see it as SDC here.

After downloading and running TestDisk, I did not make it very far as the drive does not show up. All I see is my current 2TB Samsung EVO in my PC and the 8TB storage drive. The 860 EVO is attached via USB and I can see it in Device Manager.


Is there anything more I can do ay this point to get the drive to be used with TestDisk? Or are there alternative recovery methods I might try?