Problem: Lost, Erased, or Corrupted Partition Table on External Hard Drive.

Seagate External Hard Drive
1TB Seagate Expansion Portable Drive
*Used only for my time-machine back up for my Early 2011 Macbook Pro.

Early 2011 Macbook Pro (13-Inch, 2011)
2.7 Ghz Intel Core i7
16 GB Memory
*Swapped out the Optical Drive for an SSD.
Storage Drive 1TB
SSD 128 GB

Problem Started Here:
-Picked up a New Apple MacBook Pro w/Retina Display 13.3" Display - 8GB Memory - 256GB MF840LL/A Laptop. Powered it up, and plugged-in my Seagate External Hard drive, (I believe Yosemite was the OS on this) Anyways in attempt to eject correctly; the eject Failed, and with haste I unplugged the Hard Drive. By this time, I had re-formated my Early 2011 Macbook Pro. My intention was to restore from my time machine backup on the Seagate, but when I attempted the restoration, the Hard Drive was not mounting, or even being recognized by my Mac. I verified any sign of the Seagate with
- System Information
- Disk Utility

Troubleshooting Attempts
- Went to the Local Frys picked up.
1. USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA/2.5"/3.5" Hard Drive converter
2. USB Y Cable for External Hard Drive - Dual USB A to Micro B

I attempted the following with the following results.
1. Remove HD from Enclosure and connected via SATA, but nothing changed. The lights on the hard drive didn't even light up.
2. I placed the HD back within the enclosure, and used the Dual USB A to Micro B Cable. Hard Drive Powered, and was spinning. (Only possibly with 2 USB). At this point. I went back to the Disk Utility and the System Information Panel and noticed the system has recognized my Seagate HD but it appears to have a Lost or Corrupted Partition Map Type.

Here is the System Information
Capacity: 1 TB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: Disk3
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCIPCI
Partition Map Typ: Unknown
PCI Device ID: 0x1c2d
PCI Revision ID: 0x0005
PCI Vendor ID: 0x8086

Disk Utility Information
Left Sidebar indicated an External Drive: Seagate Expansion Media BUT there is no partition (Indentation Underneath).

Also these are the only available options, the rest have been greyed out.
-First Aid (Works but is of no benefit)
-Erase
-Info - listed here.


So I proceeded to Terminal Command and tried the following with their respective results.

1. Diskutility list - Listed the drives with the same information as the DiskUtility Utility.




2. Sudo Pdisk /dev/rdisk3 - Prompted Password. Password Entered, and the following was returned.
"pdisk: Can't read block 0 from '/dev/rdisk3'.

3. Sudo Fdisk /dev/disk3 and returned the following.

4. Sudo got recover /dev/disk3 - Entered the Password and the following returned.
"gpt recover: Unable to open device '/dev/disk3': Resource Busy

5. Sudo lsof /dev/rdisk3

6. Unmounted and Mounted (At this point I've run out of options. I tried to Mount and Unmount the Drive).
Unmount via : "sudo diskutil unmountdisk force /dev/disk3".

Result: Forced Unmount of all volumes on disk3 was successful.

Mount via: "Diskutil mount /dev/disk3.

Result: Volume on disk3 timed out waiting to mount.

7. Sudo diskutil repairdisk /dev/disk3


I can't get the drive to to do anything without timing out or without a greeting from a Pread error resources busy. I have picked up the following tools.

Disk Drill
Test Disk
Disk Warrior
R-Studio
Easeus Data Recovery Wizard
Photorec


While my Hard Drive isn't visible on most of these, all except for R-Studio, Photorec, & Disk Drill. I can see the drive in Disk Drill, but I keep getting the Disk Drill Log keeps showing the following error: 12/21/15 12:24:47.824 PM Disk Drill[515]: timeout read from offset 1048576, reopen disk handle.

Photorec shows a unpartitioned Raw File without any structure to it.

Any initiative is timed out or stuck because the systems resources are busy. The drive will not read or write. Looking for some help troubleshooting this drive in hopes of salvaging the data on there. Any experience and help would go a long way.

Thanks!

Try /https://www.prosofteng.com/data-rescue-4/ and running a scan on the drive if its accessible.

It could be that you drive is starting to fail, its hard to say.
Maybe you could connect the drive to a TTL adapter and give us the terminal output of the drive.

_________________
Web: https://www.day1data.de

Have to determine whether it is a hardware related problem first. Need to test with proper tools, which you don't have, as all you listed are software based.
Suggest finding a tower machune and connect drive via SATA directly abd use something like MHDD for basic diagnosis.

Looking ahead, since the data is time machine backup, there isn't anything much you will be able "to salvage" per se. A traditional file extraction does not make much sense. You will need to be able to restore the time machine.

With this in mind, to maximize chances of success, proper hardware imaging equipment is necessary first, then experience with volume repair if needed (which to a decent level diskwarrior can assist with).

Also, some of these Seagate externals may encrypt the data, so may want to verify this is not the case with yours.

The more fuss with trivial solutions, the more chances are further damage will occur. Careful.

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

I am not able to scan it. I attempted a scan with Disk Drill but without any progress. After being stuck at 0.0% long enough to know something was wrong, I checked the logs which indicate it was unable to read the drive. I don't remember the specific error verbatim but I can acquire if need be.

Please clarify what you mean by Hardware imaging equipment?

In about 15 minutes I am going to connect the hard drive via SATA to a desktop computer and run MHDD, and I will update you of the results.

I did a quick search on Seagate Self Encrypting Hard Drives, but found no reference to my hard drive model SRD00f1. Do you know of a source so I may verify this?

Thank you Lab tech!

Based on what happened leading to the data loss, the hard drive was not subject to anything that could've led to a hardware malfunction. Could the Maverick or Yosemite operations system and the fact that I "Initialized" the drive when iI attempted to eject it help you help me find a resolution?

Hi Day1,

Thank you for offering your help. I suppose my response would be, one. could a hard drive be physically damaged from being unplugged without ejection? Because this is when the problem started, and/or I believe the OS on the new macbook had something to do with it as well. A few days later, my Flash Drive failed to eject, and I unplugged it much like I did with the hard drive, and it had corrupted files.

Second, how would I trigger the terminal output of the drive with the a TTL adapter. This is new to me so I would like to know what the objective is here so I can work my way there.

Thanks!

Sorry for the repetitive replies. Here is an update on my efforts.

I booted BHDD w/ a CD on my windows desktop. However I was not able to detect or connect the hard drive. I researched a little and noticed that MHDD has trouble detecting 2.5" Laptop drives via SATA. So I decided to check the Bios. The Hard Drive was NOT available in the BIOS.

I don't want to have to take this to a Data Recovery Center. Partly because I am so intrigued by the process of Data Recovery and want to rule out as much as I can before I know my hard drive needs a cleanroom procedure. Any help would be appreciated.

I read this link about recovering files with the HRT-DRE http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1184. The success of the recovery is contingent on a file allocation table that is readable.

I don't believe my file allocation table exists or is readable. How would this be approached?

Thanks!

In order to read data from the drive, the drive has to be accessible.
You mentioned the drive is not showing in BIOS, or MHDD. At this point, it's a dead end. Sounds like it may be a hardware failure. Neee more testing to determine point of failure. What does the drive do upon powering on? What is the behavior in detail based on sound?

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