Hi, I have two external HDD's both 500 GB with tons of pictures and videos. Both are behaving in the same way. When I plug either of them into my Samsung TV all photos and videos are there, but when I want to see the data in my PC, its not there.
I also tried booting up Linux to see if 'he' can manage to see them, but it just didn't work. Any idea how can I rescue my data?

P.S. I created image using ddrescue (using this guide https://www.data-medics.com/forum/how-t ... -t133.html), seems like there are no bad sectors only malformed FAT table. (its formatted as FAT32)

I would examine the file system with a disc editor, eg DMDE (freeware). Could we see DMDE's Partitions window?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

If you mean this, then yes. And I can normally see some files when I open it in explorer, but a very large about of data is just not there. (physically yes (i hope) but I cant see it )

The problem is that you have a FAT32 volume but the corresponding entry in the partition table in sector 0 has a partition ID of 07, which is NTFS. You need to change this ID to 0C. If you need help with this, upload the contents of sector 0.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Great, I've managed to rewrite it. Looks like I have to re-scan entire partition for directories. Any idea on what could cause the the partition ID to be rewritten to NTFS? (I study computer science and I am curious

I've seen this before, but I don't recall what caused it. I've always assumed it was due to user error. Did Windows ever prompt you to initialise the drive? If so, then that's probably when it happened.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hard to tell, since those drives were given to me, so I repair them. But I know my uncle used Windows XP.

One more question, now that I searched whole drive for lost directories (it's finished now and I am copying all files to save place), is there a way to add those found directories back to fat table, so I can access them normally (like from explorer)?

I don't know of any way to do this, or whether it is advisable. I would backup the data, rebuild the file system and copy the data back again.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

These drives are they WD Passports ?

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Digitalsupport Data Recovery
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@fzabkar

Ok, thats for your help very much



No, one is Adata (USB only powered) - the one I recovered data from. Looks similar thought.
The other one is Seagate, with seperate power adapter - I didnt try this one yet.
Why do you ask?

I have seen some cases where WD drives with virtual CD gets corrupted if used on Sammy TVs

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