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 Post subject: Testdisk alternative for copying files of a corrupted? drive
PostPosted: June 13th, 2021, 6:17 
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Joined: June 13th, 2021, 4:37
Posts: 3
Location: Germany
I'll try to be brief. I got a 4TB WD external HDD from a friend. He told me that it is no longer accessible and he needs the data.
It is one of those drives with a USB PCB.

- Tried Windows, no chance, the OS becomes laggy and unresponsive.
- Installed Xubuntu and disabled automount. Partition appeared and disappeared from lsblk over and over again.
- After switching from USB 3.0 to USB 2.0, the drive became reasonably stable. Even though it took forever for the partition to be recognised. Copying files with Testdisk was possible, but only at about 30MB per hour.
- Applied the WD royl patch mod 02 using HDDSuperTool and got reasonable speeds at about 35MB/s.
- Tried imaging the whole drive using HDDSuperClone but it didn't work well.
- Tried mounting the drive (dumb idea). Linux reported a corrupted file system, tried to repair it and got stuck. (Now the drive is stable under windows but RAW)

Last thing i did was backing up 400GB of the most important Data using Testdisk, although the drive makes death clicks from time to time or stops responding for a minute, it kept running and running. However, windows is not particularly happy with the restored files, especially all the zone.identifier files. I had to run chkdsk over the new disk and it fixed a bunch of stuff.

I still don't know what the problem is. Maybe it's just a corrupted file system after all? SMART values are also still good. At the moment i'm looking for a more convenient tool than Testdisk or advice on what to do next, as i have no Linux experience and no idea what i'm doing here. DMDE looks promising, but the free version does not allow complete folder structures to be restored.

Thx in advance :D


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 Post subject: Re: Testdisk alternative for copying files of a corrupted? d
PostPosted: June 13th, 2021, 6:59 
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Joined: November 7th, 2020, 5:31
Posts: 1084
Location: The_UK
If data was important you should have passed it to a professional immediately. The scenario you have outline would have been entry level and could have been done at minimal cost and risk. The actions undertaken have seriously damaged the chance of recovery of usable data.

Quote:
Tried imaging the whole drive using HDDSuperClone
This should have been step 1. Working well or not a clone of a failing drive is essential. We have no idea what state the original drive is in now - please tell us you didn't run linux recovery and windows chkdsk on it !

If you're going to proceed make a clone of the drive to work from now, if you're having problems with hddsuperclone post what they are and we'll try to help. Once you have a good clone we can take it from there.

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 Post subject: Re: Testdisk alternative for copying files of a corrupted? d
PostPosted: June 13th, 2021, 7:59 
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Joined: June 13th, 2021, 4:37
Posts: 3
Location: Germany
Lardman wrote:
If data was important you should have passed it to a professional immediately. The scenario you have outline would have been entry level and could have been done at minimal cost and risk.

I told him the same thing, but a professional recovery starts at 600€ (ontrack) and it wasn't worth it to him.

Lardman wrote:
please tell us you didn't run linux recovery and windows chkdsk on it !

As i said, Linux tried it while trying to mount it. Files are still readable tho, i managed to back up 400 GB of the most important data and it looks okay. Folder structure, documents and archives are fine. The rest is still desireable.

Lardman wrote:
If you're going to proceed make a clone of the drive to work from now, if you're having problems with hddsuperclone post what they are and we'll try to help.

My biggest concern with cloning is that i don't know how much space is actually used. Could be anything between 1TB and 3TB.
I saw 100GB chunks being read that consisted only of zeros. Under best circumstances it would take ~30 hrs. If the drive becomes unresponsive for a minute or so, HDDSuperClone stops and i have to to click disconnect, connect and start again. The terminal shows IO error or something when this happens. I really can't sit here and watch the screen for 30 hours, especially when no important data is actually being read ...


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 Post subject: Re: Testdisk alternative for copying files of a corrupted? d
PostPosted: June 14th, 2021, 2:41 
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Joined: November 7th, 2020, 5:31
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Location: The_UK
All the major DR "brands" have silly pricing - a good independent DR company would have charged a lot less.

A drive image from hddsc will be the same size as the drive itself - 4TB.

The drive is failing - how long it will last and how much damage it will do when it fails completely are unknowns. Applying the mod 2 patch is like taking asprin for tooth ache, it doesn't cure the problem only treats the symptoms - this is why the drive still clatters.

If you want to work live and take the risk that's up to you, DMDE is probably the cheapest of the tools and will recover files from a working drive - its only 16 euro. You will have the same issue with DMDE as you did with hddsc, all software recovery apps requires working hardware, DMDE (at least the linux version) does appear to cope with unstable hardware better than most though.

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https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/


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 Post subject: Re: Testdisk alternative for copying files of a corrupted? d
PostPosted: June 15th, 2021, 2:25 
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Joined: June 13th, 2021, 4:37
Posts: 3
Location: Germany
In the meantime i bought DMDE and it did a terrific job. I was able to restore all 1.8 TB of data with minor issues. :) There is only one question left.

What is the best file system for restoring under Linux and for later use under Windows? I restored everything to a brand new GPT NFTS drive. During the process, the old drive completely froze 3 times. Apparently it also caused the new drive to freeze and forced me to disconnect the power supply as i couldn't unmount it or shut down Linux anymore. After that i always had to run chkdsk under windows.

The data is still there, but the new drive is acting weird. I can't copy anything bigger than 1gb to it, otherwise the load shoots up to 100% and disappears from the OS. My next approach will be to copy anything from the new drive and format it again, if it lets me .. I was just wondering if a FAT system would have been better.


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 Post subject: Re: Testdisk alternative for copying files of a corrupted? d
PostPosted: June 15th, 2021, 3:05 
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Joined: November 7th, 2020, 5:31
Posts: 1084
Location: The_UK
exieven wrote:
In the meantime i bought DMDE and it did a terrific job. I was able to restore all 1.8 TB of data with minor issues. :)
That's good news then - that's about as cheap a recovery as you can get :lol: .

chkdsk and other such tools repair file systems not files, they are designed to keep machines running at all costs, even the data being stored. My money would be on the old damaged drive causing USB to die, which wouldn't be fixed by changing the filesystem. Can you hook the destination up via sata rather than usb? You could try exfat it may give you less problems with portability. You may hit filename, length and size issues with some of the more basic filesystems.

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https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/


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