Hi,

I have Seagate 3TB HDD used for media storage, initially hosted in a HP Microserver, along with other 3 HDDs. Long story short, I noticed I cannot open some file on the Seagate so I've ran a surface test with HD Santinel. The test never finished, so I've decided to buy another HDD and copy the data from the failing Seagate.

I've removed another drive from the Microserver, tried to copy files from Seagate to the new WD RED, no luck. Most of the files were not copying.
More so, the OS drive (WD 160GB) failed as well so I've moved the HDDs to another PC and connected the Seagate externally, via USB to try and do something about it.

Not much luck copying from the drive on the new PC either. Hangs on almost every file. SMART reports:
- reallocated sectors count = 48240
- current pending sector count = 64856 (hex FD58)
- uncorrectable sector count = 64856 (hex FD58)

Also, running chkdsk:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>chkdsk k:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Media.

WARNING! /F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
5888 file records processed.
File verification completed.
3 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
6244 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security descriptor verification completed.
179 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
8828440 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

2861458 MB total disk space.
2254007 MB in 5437 files.
3584 KB in 180 indexes.
8 KB in bad sectors.
126127 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
621900504 KB available on disk.

8192 bytes in each allocation unit.
366266751 total allocation units on disk.
77737563 allocation units available on disk.

After this I've decided to try HDD Regenerator 2011 with the repair option. It started last evening, estimated around 35 hours initially, but after about 1% it started to discover delays. After more than 12 hours it shows > 1000 delays, no bad sector and an estimated 600 hours to complete the scan!!
Note: the Seagate drive is connected externally and I'm using Windows 10, as I still need my computer this month. Looking at the advice for HDD Reg is to connect the drive internally and boot HDD Reg from an USB, then use regenerate all in range. I think I will do this tonight and start again.

Any other thoughts? Advice?Can it be recovered? The disk seems absolutely fine in Windows, I can access all folders correctly, no weird noises, unless I try to copy/open files.

The data is not critical, just movies & stuff I collected over years. It would be tragic to lose it, but I won't cry money tears.

I wonder what caused all this, if the Microserver is to blame in any way. The HDDs that failed are a few years old and they've been almost always on in the server for the past year.

Thanks!

Bad idea
On second thought, very bad idea

Clone the drive using ddrescue or dd_rhelp

AND DONT USE A SEAGATE

So, I should stop this "regenration"? It seems it would take forever...

OK, clone it as an external drive, is that OK? Or it's better to connect it internally?

Thanks!

Check SMART parameters. Likely drive is degraded with bad sectors.

It seems like you are trying to fix it (more like killing it) and more than likely all these software based tools will fail as the problem is likely bad sectors or hardware related.

Need to image/clone the drive with something stable: cheap and somewhat successful > ddrescue, ideal and expensive (cheaper if hiring a specialist that has one) > hardware imager.

Search the forum (search function on the upper right corner) and read a bit on Seagate (perhaps by entering the model of your drive and bad sectors)

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Odds are, head 1 is failing and you are remapping sectors that are probably good. I wish HDD Regenerator and SpinRite would stop selling their programs as data recovery tools.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

OK, I stopped HDD Reg at 3% (image below). I'll try with ddrescue. Reading a little bitabout it, found out about GNU_ddrescue.

I'll do it with the Seagate HDD attached externally, via USB.

Hey Guys, I have just a question about HDD "regeneration" or refurbishing.
I saw many people, that are doing something with HDD Regenerator, MHDD or Viktoria to get rid of "waits" or "erase bad blocks". This people are running the programs for hours to regenerate the HDD or at least get a more or less healthy SMART status.

My opinion is, that this is just a waste of time.

Very true.

If it chocks while running, stop it. Most likely a head is bad.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts