HDD showing in disk management but not in Windows

[AshD]

To start from the beginning. Something in my PC blew the motherboard and GPU and possibly has done something to 2 of 3 HDD's.

I know a basic level of PC's but I have it a PC shop and they installed a new mobo and GPU - Its now up and running but 2 HDD's aren't showing up, the other is fine as is the SSD.

They did a Smart test on all HDD's and 2 showed the following errors:

The 1st Segate 2TB
SMART – fault
(BE) Airflow temperature – Failed, no bad sectors and windows can’t read the drive.

The 2nd Segate 2TB drive
SMART – fault
(BE) Airflow temperature – Failed, no bad sectors and windows can’t read the drive.
(C5) Current Pending Sector – Warning
+ few bad sectors - windows can’t read the drive.

I have connected them and installed windows. They show in disk management but I cannot access them at all. I had a message I believe was related to the drives saying they need to be formatted to access but I don't want to lost the files! Is there anything I can do to gain access or recover the files??

[fzabkar]

Could we see the SMART report?

http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html

Could we see the Partitions window in DMDE (freeware disc editor)?

https://dmde.com

[AshD]

I am running a smart test from R-Studio demo now on both HDD's.

I installed the DMDE program and saved the .dat files but it won't let me attach them, can I send another way?

[AshD]

Can this have anything to do with the fact that the two HDD's were originally partitioned as 1 drive on the computer. I opened one of the drives in DMDE it said the following:

Partitions occupy up to 7 814 045 696 LBA (4.00 TB)
Current disk size: 3 907 029 168 LBA (2.00 TB)

There may be partitioning erros, drive errors (>2TiB/LBA48 not supported) adapter problems (translation) capacity limits (HPA, Jumper, RAID dissassembled)..

[AshD]

I would start by taking a moment to consider if the data is of significant value or not. If yes please do consider to send the drive to a proper data recovery firm.

If the datainside the drive is not of great value and you can live without it you can start by using MHDD to check if you detect and scan the drive at all. Do a scan at the start of the drive for some sec. then skip to the middle and to the end. If you can scan the drive then most likely you can copy data out of it. Just grab a copy of ddrescue and image/clone the drive to a known good working one. As a last step run logic data recovery software as r-studio or getdataback on the image/clone and save the data to a 3rd drive.

If you can't scan the drives at all then there is further issues that have to be solved first,

At that stage you might either consider it not do-it-yourself or you might play with TTL and attempt to figure out what is going on with the drive but without very expensive tools and know-how its not going to be an easy mission !

I am using R-Studio Demo to scan the drives. They both show up and are currently being scanned now. Is there something I can use to safely copy date out or can it end up causing more damage if done wrong? the data is valuable to me!

[fzabkar]

@AshD, it appears that the two drives may have been members of a RAID 0 array, or perhaps they were spanned/dynamic volumes.

BTW, you can attach your DAT files if you ZIP them.

DMDE will allow you to recreate the RAID, if that is the problem.

Alternatively try ReclaiME:

http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/

[AshD]

I have attached the DMDE partition windows as .DAT files

Attachments

.Dat.zip

DMDE Files

(1.08 KiB) Downloaded 1212 times

[AshD]

@AshD, it appears that the two drives may have been members of a RAID 0 array, or perhaps they were spanned/dynamic volumes.

BTW, you can attach your DAT files if you ZIP them.

DMDE will allow you to recreate the RAID, if that is the problem.

Alternatively try ReclaiME:

http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/

Is there anyway to tell if that is the problem?

[AshD]

Yes they were configured as RAID - I believe that is the cause. Is there anything I can do to rebuild the RAID or is it quite complicated and worth getting a specialist to do this to recover the files and all folders?

[fzabkar]

It appears that both drives have been initialised. Is that something you did, or did the shop do it?

[AshD]

It appears that both drives have been initialised. Is that something you did, or did the shop do it?

What do you mean by initialised? I haven't done anything myself so the shop I imagine

[fzabkar]

It looks like the shop damaged your RAID.

"Initialising" your file system involves writing MBR partitioning structures to sector 0 as in the case of HDD2, or to the EFI sectors at the beginning and end of the drive, as in the case of HDD1.

I would try ReclaiME. I don't know whether the free version will reconstruct your broken RAID, but hopefully it will at least determine the RAID parameters (eg stripe size). You could use these parameters in DMDE and hopefully you will see your file system. DMDE may even be able to repair the partition structure.

I would be happy to work with you, but we need to do some investigation in read-only mode. Please do not be tempted to write on either drive.

[AshD]

It looks like the shop damaged your RAID.

"Initialising" your file system involves writing MBR partitioning structures to sector 0 as in the case of HDD2, or to the EFI sectors at the beginning and end of the drive, as in the case of HDD1.

I would try ReclaiME. I don't know whether the free version will reconstruct your broken RAID, but hopefully it will at least determine the RAID parameters (eg stripe size). You could use these parameters in DMDE and hopefully you will see your file system. DMDE may even be able to repair the partition structure.

I would be happy to work with you, but we need to do some investigation in read-only mode. Please do not be tempted to write on either drive.

If you can help me in any way, it would be great! Companies are quoting £2-3K which I cannot afford

[fzabkar]

I haven't used ReclaiME, but try to determine your RAID's parameters using this tool.

Also, could we see a visual representation of the Partitions windows of each drive? This will hopefully show us the locations of the boot sectors, and this may in turn help us to determine the RAID's stripe size.

[AshD]

I have played it safe and taken them to a data recovery company. Lesson learnt for not backing up properly!

[fzabkar]

<sigh> ISTM that the fix would have been extremely easy, well within the capabilities of a novice. Too bad.