I have this WD Blue 2T drive since January and it was the system drive running win10 and then last week it died.

I tried to look at by booting from Kyhi but it wouldn't even boot.
I hung it off another Windows sytem and that system couldn't see it.
I hung it off a Linux Mint box and it saw it alright but said it could not be mounted. Refuses to mount I think it said.

I took it back to the shop and they said it's sick alright, we'll give you a replacement. We can't fix it and we can't get data off it.

So I brought it home to see what I can do. I have a few thousand pics on there that I'd like to rescue and god knows how many downloaded pdf's.

Are there any avenue's open to me?

Are you connecting internally via SATA or externally via USB?

Can you retrieve a SMART report?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

SATA connection. Can't get anything from windows - it doesn't even see it.

From Mint perhaps I could get something if someone would tell me how... It at least sees it but when I click on it the system tells me it refuses to mount and tells me to get windows to fully it shut it down or something......

wow... i just went to look at it (it's way up in the shed) to check that message and I found the 'disk' thing an clicked it and I got a screen showing the partitions on it and then I right clicked on there and got a SMART option and it put up a screen saying that overall the disk is OK !!!!

But not mounted.

So I've set it going doing the self test it offered. Hope that's not a bad thing to do....

I would have cloned it immediately.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

how do I do that?

and it would require a 2T drive to clone to wouldn't it? I don't have one.

Could I 'clone' the major partition?

You can use HDDSuperClone or ddrescue.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I'm reading up on ddrescue and it sounds good. plenty of good info in the manual. one thing it doesn't make clear to me though: how do I start?

download the .tar and then that needs to be unwrapped on my Mint machine? Where I'll do all the job. (i'm working here on a windows thing)

Is that right? And then it becomes available to terminal commands?

Or it needs to be run from something like Parted Magic ? One site I"m looking at says to do it that way...

and I will be able to see how big that major partition is to see if there's enough room on my Mint system drive (the only drive in it) or I have to assume it'll be nearly the full 2T of the bad drive?

FYI
This topic seems to have been started here:
https://www.data-medics.com/forum/drive ... t3362.html

I have made a few replies on that thread, but things are just getting started in both places. If I am going to get involved, I am only going to respond in one place or the other.

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http://www.hddsuperclone.com
Home of HDDSuperClone

yep. I just now posted over there that i'm happy to stick to this forum.

Get hold of a similar sized drive and clone it using ddrescue or my favourite HDDSuperClone Pro (buy the 2 month licence to see if it's for you. I've just recovered all the user data from a badly damaged drive using HDDSuperClone Pro when no other software would work.

yep. that was/is my plan. I'm waiting for a drive to arrive. didn't know about superclone though, if ddrescue doesn't work I'll try it.

I'm also hoping for some input on the 'set the dirty file flag' that was suggested to me. I wonder just what risks I take if I set it, if any, that sort of thing. Don't want to do it just on the bald suggestion.

though I guess it is possible that's the only thing stopping the drive being mounted and read as normal.

Possibly the flag is there to prevent a drive being mounted simply because mounting it in the state it is in could damage the data irretrievably... that's the worry...

First, I would like to add some info from the thread in the other forum.

* The drive model is WD20EZAZ - 00GGJBO.
* This drive is a newer WD Blue drive, which likely has encrypted SA and a locked board.
* This drive may be suffering from a common WD firmware issue, or possibly a bad or weak head.
* If it is suffering from the common “slow responding issue”, then the issue could likely only be fixed by professional tools and an unlocked board (professional recovery).
* The OP has indicated that the data is not worth professional data recovery.
* I have stated that if it is only suffering from the slow responding issue, then there are ways to help with the read speed without being able to fix the slow issue, and to target the needed data.

Now for my opinion. If the drive is suffering from the slow issue, it will take forever to clone. When you get a drive to clone it to, and the cloning process is very slow and reports it will take many weeks or months or longer to complete, then you will need to rethink things. Considering that the data you wish to recover does not seem very large (a few GB maybe?), it could be possible to target that data. But that would most likely require some paid software, although very affordable (should only be $25 total). Also, if you choose to use ddrescue, I will not be able to provide assistance with that. But if you use HDDSuperClone and need help, you could provide the progress log file and I could analyze it, giving an indication of the issue of the drive, and further ideas, and if the paid pro features would be helpful or not.

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http://www.hddsuperclone.com
Home of HDDSuperClone

Well I don't think I can add anything to the description of what's wrong with the drive. I did mention that Mint reported it would not mount? And Mint says the file system is corrupt or words to that effect?

But Mint allowed a SMART test and that test reported the disk was OK?

And I got a suggestion somewhere that I should rest the 'dirty file' flag.

That's all I know and that's where things stand right no.

I am awaiting delivery of a new drive and then I plan to clone/copy whatever and then after that work on the drive.

I have software waiting to be used: systemrescuecd, parted magic, gddrescue, photorec, winWrepair and testdisk-7.2

I will add HDDSuperClone to the list and work through the list until I get results.

All I can do now is wait, I think.

The HDDLiveCD ISO on HDDSuperClone's (maximus') website has most if not all that's needed (TestDisk / Photorec are probably not included, and I didn't know about winWrepair, anyway on Linux systems most tools can be installed with a simple command from the terminal).


"OK" is not enough, you should check the details, and post it here for someone to interpret the relevant parameters.
Don't know what SMART tool is included with Mint, what I use is gSMARTControl, which can be quickly installed from the terminal if it's not already :



Not sure about the "dirty" flag (if I remember correctly it tells the system that the partition may be corrupted and should be checked at startup), but it should be irrelevant for the cloning / imaging process.

Hello and thanks for the input. I just installed gsmartcontrol.

But I don't think I need it right now. There's been some development.

I did a Superclone clone and worked on the clone a bit.

First thing: the clone (sdc) is reported as being exactly the same as the original (sdb). i.e. unmountable.

Which indicates to me the problem is software, not hardware. The disks are alright. What's written on them isn't.

I was able to mount the data partition: sdc4 read only and have rescued some 30,000 files I wanted: .img and .pdf and mkv, mp4 etc.

The question now is how to 'cure' the disks of whatever ails them.

So I ran ntfsfix -d with no luck on sdc but success on sdc1 which I suppose is what I should have done in the first place.

So that looked good but in the gui file system thing only the first two partitions can be seen.

Mounted on /mnt/fixedsea. Using terminal and going to that directory also shows only two two other folders: 'recovery' and 'system volume information'.

I am not sure what to do next.

Can you show us DMDE's Partitions window?

https://dmde.com/

If you can see your data partition, d-click it and expand the $Root. Do you now see your file/folder tree?

BTW, the NTFS dirty bit is an indicator of whether the NTFS volume is consistent. If the volume is dirty, then this may provoke Windows into running CHKDSK against the volume, which is most probably inadvisable.

Just FYI ...

Locating the NTFS "dirty bit":
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=117&t=2126

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I had a nice old hassle getting the dmde thing. I don't know how to install from a zip. so it's currently just laying there unzipped and I'm running it by clicking on the dmde program file. Probably not the right way to go about it.

and then the screenshot thing - we have to go all through that fishing it out of the menu thing every time... ?

Hope this is helpful.