Hi everyone.

I have an external HDD (Seagate model SRD00F1 P/N: 1K9APA-500, 1.5 TB) that was working fine until *I think* it was unplugged during a data transfer. I was not using it at the time and thats what I can infer happened from what I was told.

It does not make any unusual noises when its running. The BIOS can detect it, and it is appearing in windows explorer but gives the error code "E:\ is not accessible. The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable". I have used CrystalDiskInfo and the screenshots is attached. Disk management also shows the drive formatted as RAW, but previously this showed as not initialized - screenshot also attached. It only went from not-initialized to RAW after I plugged it in again.

https://imgur.com/a/Kl5mXTh

I have not taken any steps to recover or scan the drive in any way other than the CrystalDiskInfo readout.

We have some important data on it that I am hoping can be recovered, and if anyone has any advice on how to proceed, I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks!

Clone the drive with HDDSuperClone or OpenHDDSuperClone. Both are open source. The latter is a fork of the former. Then run data recovery software against the clone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/hddsuperclone_guide/

These are the tools the pros use:

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3208

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks I will do this next - Do I need to remove this HDD from its enclosure, or should I try using USB? It has a USB micro b connection.

SATA would be best.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks - I removed it from the enclosure and have an available SATA connection I can use.

Since this is a 1.5 TB drive but it appears to only have approx 100 GB stored on it, is there a way I can use a smaller drive (500 GB) for the clone? Or am I forced to get another drive with =>1.5 TB?

yes, it is definitely possible with expensive tools, but can't think of anything free capable of that atm (maybe some FS aware cloning tool + VHDX). Just go for the 1.5T+ target drive.

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Adatmentés - Data recovery