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 Post subject: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: October 20th, 2021, 9:20 
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Joined: October 20th, 2021, 8:49
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Location: Bulgaria
Everyone has lost a HDD in their lifetime. If you had one - you broke one at one point. And all the data you have been hoarding on it.
"You need to format the disk before you can use it!" -No, thanks, Windows!
The data is still on the drive. But something has corrupted the storage table or file system. Now there are a lot methods and programs you can try to recover the data, but they all ask for a new drive for the data to be recovered on. And with today's huge drives, it takes an enormous amount of time to scan the drive and then transfer all the recoverable files on a new empty drive that you must have on hand. And the results are multiple files spread across multiple folders with random names, files with missing names, RAW files, damaged files, bloated files. It's a nightmare!
And then it happens to another HDD in less than a month, and it happens in seconds! All your files - gone! Again! It's random and devastating and the best solution is to keep a backup and RAID for your storage. But why can't we just recover the table instead of the data? Or make a backup of the table instead of the data? Wouldn't that make more sense? To store safely an image of how the data was stored before and after each use, so that you can restore the way the HDD looked like before it broke? A restore that would take a lot less time and you wouldn't need a second HDD laying around.
So far I haven't found an answer to what I'm looking for, so I hope someone can explain it here for me. I'm just sick of dealing with broken, lost, deleted, and RAW partitions. Invisible drives and locked folders with all my data sitting behind. Every time I copy something feels like I'm gambling.
As more info I can say is all my drives are healthy and in the green, various brands and 2 to 4 TB in size. I am now keeping them on cold storage and only use them for file transfers. I hate how Windows makes the whole PC slower when a HDD is attached and also how it randomly checks if the HDDs are still there.
I would like to know of a way to protect the drives better against sudden corruption, to minimize the chances, but also if there is a method that would allow me to store an image of them before that happens, so I can restore them on place - on the same HDD with no data loss.
So far I have only seen programs that can change formats without data loss like from RAW or FAT to NTFS.


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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: October 20th, 2021, 10:30 
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Joined: November 7th, 2020, 5:31
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Location: The_UK
id104335409 wrote:
I would like to know of a way to protect the drives better against sudden corruption, to minimize the chances, but also if there is a method that would allow me to store an image of them before that happens, so I can restore them on place - on the same HDD with no data loss.
Raid will protect you against 1 or more physical drive failures - it will not protect you against corruption, which is a very broad term.

id104335409 wrote:
I'm just sick of dealing with broken, lost, deleted, and RAW partitions. Invisible drives and locked folders with all my data sitting behind
This is the problem you need to fix, not treat the symptom. If you're storing files on junk drives using cheap docks rubbish like this it's to be expected. Find a proper storage solution, either internally, NAS or online and then back that up regularly.

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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: October 20th, 2021, 18:12 
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Joined: October 15th, 2021, 14:25
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Well, if you clone the drive completely or mirror it you'll have the exact image of how it looked before it broke. :roll: You just have to pay for it with additional storage space. Or you can use a raid5-like configuration even with storage spaces: https://pureinfotech.com/setup-raid-5-windows-10/ and have full redundancy at cost of just one drive volume of the whole bunch. And of performance, of course. You can even use virtual drives with it and if one physical drive will fail, you'll be like "whatever, let me just create another virtual drive on the other device with a few clicks and just move it on the actual replacement disk later".

Anyways, the only way of seeing any data storage is to see it as a live system, which will inevitably break and always has to have redundancy as well as recovery measures. That's the way data protection is developing now and that's the reason why no one makes devices and/or software that would make recovering data from a broken device more convenient.


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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: October 23rd, 2021, 6:49 
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Joined: December 13th, 2020, 18:47
Posts: 53
Location: recoverland
Recommending using "Storage Space" is a pretty bad advice as this an undocomented proprietary format.
Despite any promissed "RAID5"-type redundancy you will finally end up with a broken structure that involves more than one disk discovering that you rarely find recovery software nor help for your problems.

Follow the advice of Lardman above.


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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: October 28th, 2021, 4:06 
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Joined: October 20th, 2021, 8:49
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Location: Bulgaria
Here is the thing people are kind of avoiding: this is not about failed drives or bad sectors or damaged files.
This is about the "rare" situation where a hiccup happens like power loss during file transfer for example. No matter how new your HDD or SSD is, the file table will get corrupt. And no matter the disk size - 1TB or 12TB, everything is lost in a second. The data is still on the disk ofcourse. And it is recoverable. But the process for a 12 TB mixed media is a nightmare. Everywhere I searched the answer is always - do a backup of the whole disk and then do another backup offsite. But if you do a backup of the file table - wouldn't that be a lot easier and faster? Everyone says no that doesn't work, but without any explanation why is that so.
I did find some obscure programs that mention backing up file tables, but no proof of a working program or a detailed explanation on how that works. For example in one forum someone had backed it up, but the program he used didn't have a method of restoring that backup. Sketchy stuff.


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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: October 28th, 2021, 5:50 
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Joined: October 3rd, 2005, 0:40
Posts: 4311
Location: Hungary
Quote:
Well, if you clone the drive completely or mirror it you'll have the exact image of how it looked before it broke.


this is a major misconception. Or have you invented time machine?
If you clone a drive after the failure you will have the image of the drive AFTER it broke.

Of course, if you have a clone of a pre-fail state, that's a different story.

pepe

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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: October 28th, 2021, 5:59 
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Joined: October 3rd, 2005, 0:40
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backing up the file table could be useful on an NTFS system but on others it is not a trivial task (not even on NTFS with nonresident attributes). However, i would be careful about restoring it to the same disk, unless cloned previously.

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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: October 31st, 2021, 21:04 
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Joined: March 29th, 2018, 9:34
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Location: HSV SFO
Back in the day with FAT, you could back up the FAT tables as they could get corrupted (but they have their own backup in a second location), but with today's file systems, this isn't really possible any more.

Bottom line is that drives will fail for whatever reason and if the data is important, it needs to follow the best practices 3-2-1 rule.


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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: November 1st, 2021, 11:47 
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Joined: October 3rd, 2005, 0:40
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backing up FAT is not sufficient either.

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 Post subject: Re: Restore HDD data on the same drive. Why can't we do it?
PostPosted: November 1st, 2021, 14:38 
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Joined: March 29th, 2018, 9:34
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pepe wrote:
backing up FAT is not sufficient either.
It definitely wasn't since if the clusters on the drive changed, the fat would be wrong.


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