Hi everyone, TFNG here!

A month ago, almost to the day, a 2TB WD "Yellow" died on me. Turned the PC off one night, turned it back on the following morning to be confronted by CHKDSK on boot, that took hours, and was unsuccessful. I did a bit of digging around, and eventually ended up here, read several threads, downloaded a recommended Xubuntu live USB image, and somehow managed to fumble my way around enough to image the disk onto a spare 2TB (another WD Yellow) drive with HDDSuperClone 2.3.3. I fired a second PC up with the imaged HDD in, and low and behold, unexpectedly, without any further fiddling, there were all my files! Thank you Hard Drive Guru gurus!

I copied everything I thought I'd lost on to a brand new (NOS) 4TB WD Yellow drive in my little HP Microserver, and everything was fine until this morning...

I turn on the HP Microserver this morning (I only really use it as a NAS now... backups, media files for streaming to the TV sometimes, etc., so it's not on 24/7), and try to access it through Windows File Explorer. The server doesn't show up! I think to myself "must be installing updates" (it runs headless), so I go and make a cup of tea, and come back 10 minutes later and try to access it with AnyDesk... nothing. Try with Remote Desktop, just in case AnyDesk failed to start up... nothing. Not having a VGA monitor to plug into it, I popped the 3x HDDs out, and rebooted it, and it fired right up. With Disk Management open, one-by-one I plugged the HDDs back in (the Microsever has a modded BIOS so the SATA drives are hot-swappable), and all good until I plug the *new* 4TB drive in. Everything locks up, and eventually it shows up in Disk Management... where it reports as "RAW". Bugger!

So, thank you for bearing with my story so far, and here's my question(s)...

Has anyone ever experienced coincidental failures like this before, or would it be crazy to suspect some form of "sleeping" malware that could corrupt the $MFT on both disks? In all my years of tinkering (first PC was an 8086 DOS machine!), I've never had a hard drive fail. Now I've had two go in a month, in exactly the same way, in two different machines!

Also, I have all (most) of the important data on another HDD already, so it's not the end of the world to "lose" it on the 4TB, but how do I go about reformatting said 4TB drive, and is it simply a case of just formatting it? I have a feeling this "The Master File Table (MFT) contains a corrupted file record" mesage make it a bit more serious than "just format it and it'll be OK again"?!

Thank you in advance to anyone with some ideas.

Did you check the drives - both the old and new to ensure the issues you are having aren't just logical ones?

Check the drives smart and test them with victoria or similar a complete read/write test should expose and issues. FWIW - it's wd gold not wd yellow.

I assume this is a gen7 microserver? There are a number of modded bios files doing the rounds given they mess with the sata controller features I'd roll it back to original HP or try another.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Thank you for your reply, Lardman.

I have downloaded Victoria, and will try it now. It tends to lock the system up if I boot into Windows though... the trouble is I'm far more comfortable working in Windows than I ever am in Linux. I'll see what I can do and get back to you.

Is it not strange to have two seemingly identical faults, in two different machines, so close to each other? Or can I [possibly] just put it down to Sod's Law? Just one of those things.... sh*t happens?!

You don't know that you have faulty drives yet.

It's possible you have a faulty backplane, cable, PSU etc in which case it would make perfect sense for the drives to display the same symptoms.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Pretty much out of my depth here, but I like to try and deal with things myself. Hopefully these shots means something?







As I said previously though, the two drives failed the same way in two different machines. Sorry if it's a stupid question, but how likely is it that both machines suddenly have the same bad PSU/cable/interface issue within a month of one another?

I missed the bit about it being 2 different machines - I thought both drives failed in the microsever.

That drive is certainly failing - Looks like heads have impacted the platters. What about the other?

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

I don't have results for the 2TB yet, as I clicked "Test & Repair" on the 4TB this morning, and it's still going.... now at 80.5%

As soon as it's finished I will pop the 2TB in the PC and run the first test.

If it's the cat jumping on the PC, I'm going to string it up! That was a brand new old stock 4TB drive 2 weeks ago!!

I wouldn't waste any more time on that drive you can't fix it- Any warranty ? If the temperature readings are to be trusted it's also running way too hot, is the 120mm fan running ?

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Thank you for taking the time to reply again, Lardman.

I will contact the vendor and see if they will accept a return. It was sold as new (although an old drive), which I am guessing by the "power cycle count" looks to be true?

Here's the info from the 2TB. Same type of drive, that was in my daily PC...







This one I was able to image via the Xubuntu live USB (thanks to scanning through this forum a couple of weeks ago, and I think following your advice of "image the disk now!!!!" that cropped up several times!) and recover all the data from. Sadly, I recovered it and saved it all the 4TB that's now died!