I also suggest diagnostic with MHDD or similar first to rule out fault on drive.
Then depending on outcome, may move onto software. Though I would recommend you make a clone first. Never know, your drive may fail in the middle of doing whatever.

What software is used matters as they are all built slightly different. Some will.display data structure right away while others require scanning first, factors which can have various impacts on the drive.

Also, if you have a FAT structure, then also is not as great, as FAT at times can pose problems, especially if a lot has been going over the life of the drive.

Best wishes.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Thank you.

would it be possible to run getdataback (for ex.) and go back and run a different software such as testdisk in case the first one doesn't work?
Thanks again

As long as the drive physically ok then yes
but say if the drive has a fault & is failing then you will probably kill it quicker

The testdisk process I posted will only take 2 to 3 minutes to check/do hence this wouldnt put much strain on the disk
Where as running DR software scan will scan each sector of the drive & will take a lot longer to complete thus placing more stress on a drive. In this situation you wouldn't do a DR scan but would as previously mentioned do a full sector by sector image of the drive then you would run the DR scans on the image you created.


Loki

Loki,
It worked ! i had a bad sector and I followed your steps with testdisk. Thanks a lot man, I really appreciate it.

Do you recommend transfering my data to another hard drive and dump the old one, just in case it happens again?

Congratulations I'm glad it worked out good for you.
Always keep a backup of your data .
There are some free online storage but they will limit the GB size you can use.

Loki

Hi guys

In my case the situation is:
HDD WD 4Tb sata3 - partitioned with gparted in two: 0.5 and 3 Tb. I have saved on it all my data, finished well and after, in remaining free space I tried to recover data from on old drive using rs or rs+ sw( i don't remember exactly the name)

From now on my problem starts : suddenly my OS win 7 ultimate x64 ask for initialize disk. I don't realize that it refers to my 3T drive, gave it the ok to do it .. my s/w then freeze, I was continued to use OS, and after 12h, when i came back from work noticed that I can see my drive.

I had a quick search and i start with MiniTool Power Data Recovery v 6.8 - running from an USB bootable stick.
After 12 H, it finds data structured in two categories:
1. lost files - a small part,that keep my folder and files names and structure
2. RAW files - the rest of data, structured in folders named by file types.

In meanwhile i kept looking for solution and understandint that Get Data Back or Stellar Phoenix Windows recovery or RStudio are more recommended.

Can you please give one minute to my problem and guide me to what you consider to be the recommended s/w for recover my data in the initial files and folders structure.

Thanks and take care of your back-up allways!!