External Hdd becomes Raw type how to recover data

[akash5430]

am trying to recover an external hard drive that is not able to be read and Windows wants me to format it. I use it for recording music and there is data on it that I can't lose. So I began the scan, it didnt found partitions, but on a quick scan I get,

and
"The following partition can't be recovered:

After a deep scan ialso not found ant thing . How can i recover my data now


After a Quick Search and deep search , there had no partition listed.
no partition found

It showed Key A: add partition, L: load backup, enter: to continue

I am thinking to press enter: to continue, but would like to know what will happen after I press enter?

Top

[cgrenier]

Try TestDisk, Advanced, Boot, RebuildBS, List. If you see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer.

[rafnet]

Try TestDisk, Advanced, Boot, RebuildBS, List. If you see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer.

Hi, I have the same problem: my 3Tb hdd is "seen" only as RAW by Windows 7. I state that:
- It is precisely an external HDD that I use as archive
- It's a WD green SATA mostly used with windows 7, so it had NTFS partition
I used Photorec (from windows) and it only makes me recover some files (which it renames in its own way), after which I used Testdisk, from windows, after doing the disk analysis, it warns me that there is a mismatch meaning the disk geometry, then I continued with Quicksearch and all the folders with all the files inside are showed, everything looks like in the right place (at least visually), after this I tried to do a saving test of some files according to Testdisk procedure, and copying them into another hdd, Testdisk was able to recover them. Now I would like to ask: I realized that copying simple jpg pictures or 200mb rar archives or 300/400mb video files and pasting them into the other hdd is a very very slow operation, so there is a way to speed up the copying process or maybe this very slow copying process is normal? If I try to do like you suggest (Advanced, Boot, RebuildBS, List, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer), may I will be able to access the disk normally or there is any data loss risk?

[cgrenier]

>
...
Testdisk was able to recover them. Now I would like to ask: I realized that copying simple jpg pictures or 200mb rar archives or 300/400mb video files and pastinge them into the other hdd is a very very slow operation, so there is a way to speed up the copying process or maybe this very slow copying process is normal? If I try to do like you suggest (Advanced, Boot, RebuildBS, List, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer), may I will be able to access the disk normally or there is any data loss risk?

There should be no risk as long as you choose Write ONLY if TestDisk can list your files.

[rafnet]

Thak you for the reply, I tried to do Analisys first:


Next Quicksearch:


then this is the result:


so, choosing "P", I can see all directories and files on the hdd and is also possible to make a copy of them into another hdd:

But as I already told, the copy process is very slow, like 200kbs!!!

I also tried to to: Advanced, Boot, RebuildBS as you told before, but I realized that the rebuilding process is very very slow too: it started at 3 a.m. and after 16 hours the MFT searching was still in a position like 39087445/784594260 (I don't exactly remember what numbers there were), I think it likes to be about at only 5% done after 16 hours!.
Do you think it's necessary to make the rebuilding process ends by waiting for all those hours, or I may risk to straining too much the hdd and damaging it further?

[recuperation]

Do you think it's necessary to make the rebuilding process ends by waiting for all those hours, or I may risk to straining too much the hdd and damaging it further?

Duplicating a drive with ddrescue that you suspect to be dammaged is always a good idea.