Hi Folks--

I had a Seagate Expansion Drive model SRD00F2. I say had, because the USB plug on the back of it got bent and destroyed. The drive contained within was a 4TB ST4000DM000.

I thought to myself, no problem... I'd just take the drive out of the enclosure and hook it up directly, internally. NO, foolish Carbon-based-unit ugly-bag-of-mostly-water! I did save the circuit board of it that had the female end of the USB3 plug, which may or may not be also destroyed. When I attached a different drive to it nothing happened, but the cord would prevent that from working anyway.

Apparently Seagate has some translation in the enclosure's firmware to allow a 2.2+ TB drive to work seamlessly with non-UEFI BIOSs. W10 sees it as three partitions, Linux sees as one large empty one. (see pics attached here)

I bought a data recovery tool called Recoverit. It took about 1.5 weeks to scan the drive and transfer whatever it found to a new 5TB external (WD Passport) that I'd bought just for the purpose. A lot of it's just gibberish; Recoverit also attempted to restore everything that was ever written and deleted from the drive too. File names were not preserved, never mind directories.

I have made damn sure not to write to the drive and I'm reasonably sure everything is still intact on it, if I can just figure out Seagate's weird partitioning scheme. Short of buying another SRD00F2 enclosure (discontinued), is there a way to fix things? 4TB is a *LOT* of data. All of my movies, gone, not to mention other stuff.

I really hope someone here knows what to do. Thanks in advance... !

The enclosure's firmware is configured with a sector size of 4KB. You can see your data with DMDE.

Replacing the USB-SATA bridge PCB would be the most expedient option, but DMDE should allow you to recover your data under the present conditions.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Why not just fix the usb plug ?

Recoverit did get back a lot if not most of the files, what it did not get back was their original names and the directories they were in. Last night I went through about 25 large .AVI files and was able to see which movie it was by just opening then, but that isn't feasible for all of the files on the drive, which number 4.8 million.

I'm running DMDE now under Linux. It's much much faster than Recoverit was.

The very best ideal solution is to, as you say, replace the PCB, which may be what I will end up having to do if I can't find a solution with software.

If the only problem was the USB plug, then DMDE would have found your file/folder tree within seconds. There would have been no need for a full scan. That is unless you initialised and formatted the drive after removing it from its enclosure.

Moreover, if the file system was untouched by you, then Recoverit should have found the original file/folder tree. If it couldn't, then it really is a very poor tool. Wondershare is not well regarded in the data recovery community (in fact it is loathed by many people, and banned by some forums).

BTW, reattaching the USB connector would be the ideal solution, but replacing the PCB would be the most expedient (for most users). That's all I meant to say.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

For what it's worth, I happen to have a Seagate enclosure which happens to be a SRD00F2. (Purchased a used HDD which was in it, rapidly noticed the issue that's causing your worries, meaning that it was not possible to use a drive formatted inside the enclosure out of it, and conversely, to use a drive formatted outside of it inside of it, so it's been collecting dust for a few years. I was thinking of maybe reselling a 2TB drive with it, once I'd have properly reorganized my “fleet” of HDDs, but haven't got around to doing it yet, and never seem to get enough storage space anyway. And I would have to tell the potential buyers about this potential caveat, so I'm not sure if it would be sold that way, unless I also claim that it cures COVID.)
But if you're in the USA (KS, Kansas perhaps ?) it may not be worth the shipping fee. At least you will know that there are still some of these bastards lurking around ! è_é