EXT HDD Recovery Problem

[jfiller]

Greetings all,

I'm new here, but I'm hoping someone can help me. I have an external drive with what I presume to be bad sectors, and I'm attempting to recover the data before I reformat, but I've run into a couple issues early on. Here's some background:

- It is a Verbatim 500GB portable (usb powered) drive

- OS does not "recognize" the drive when attached, meaning drive path is not shown - audible confirmation of connection is heard, however.

- Properly identified and visible under "disk drives" in device manager

- Disk Management utility freezes while "connecting to virtual disk service" when drive is connected, and immediately unfreezes and correctly shows internal/partitioned drives when usb is unplugged.

- Also, when drive is disconnected, the prompt "You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it - Do you want to format it?" immediately displays, but never when the drive is connected.

- Tried on two different systems, one Win7 64 bit and one Win7 32 bit with the same results.

- I'm planning to use data recovery software to recover as much of the data as possible before I proceed with a format; it contains irreplaceable data. I (in hindsight, stupidly) placed it on this drive (without a backup) for "only a couple days" as I was sorting and organizing my data among various drives. Wouldn't you know it, this is when the drive decides to fail!

- I feel as though if I can get the drive path to be recognized, the rest of the process ought to be fairly smooth sailing...

I appreciate any help I can get. I'm hoping to draw on your cumulative wealth of knowledge and experience, If you need further information be sure to let me know.

Thanks!

[Vulcan]

it contains irreplaceable data.

Therefore do you really, really want to take additional risks of DIY recovery attempts, which might make any later professional recovery more difficult/expensive, or in the worst case, impossible?

[dobrevjetser]

I have seen to many cases of hdd that have been victim of a users effort to recover by DIY and was beyond recovery after that.


Dobre

[Vulcan]

Understood Dobre - that's exactly the result I'm trying to avoid for the OP and his "irreplaceable data".

[jfiller]

I'm willing to take the risk gents, Unfortunately costly professional data recovery is not an option.

[poehere]

I'm willing to take the risk gents, Unfortunately costly professional data recovery is not an option.

Sorry to hear this one. You have some issues on this and without some ezpensive tools this one might be hard to do. On the other hand you might get lucky or you might not. If your data is so important might consider what the other two said on this one and put the HDD away until you can take it to a professional recovery center. In this state now I do not think it can be too much to do this one. The more you play around and mess it up the price will double and triple each time. Good luck on this one

[pcimage]

I have seen to many cases of hdd that have been victim of a users effort to recover by DIY and was beyond recovery after that.


Dobre

We see results of DIY every single day

Often it's had disastrous results,making recovery many times more expensive and sometimees downright impossible.

[HDRA]

Good luck. Perhaps you can accomplish the miracle so many others fail at.

[laptokowiec]

If you can, connect it directly to SATA.
Clone it then (DMDE or HDclone).
Then you can recover the files.