I need advice I just bought this. It will be less than a month ago but not by much. It's to replace a Western Digital WD30EZRX-00MMMB0 and a 1.5TB Seagate. I doesn't show up under Windows but I can recover the partitions using Active Partition Recovery but that shows it in being bad shape. Saturday I went to access something on the Western Digital WD30EZRX-00MMMB0 but it's doing the same thing as the 4TB Seagate. I bought the Seagate data recovery plan from Amazon.

Should I send the drive for recovery? Get a new one and hope to be able to recover what's on the Western Digital? I've use Active Partition Recovery with drives in the same condition before.

I've attached a report generated by "smartctl 6.0 2012-10-10 r3643 [i686-linux-3.5.6-pmagic] (local build)
"

Thanks

The SMART data look OK. IMHO, the only concern is the Command Timeouts, although the raw value looks much worse than it is. AFAICS, the drive has recorded 8 timeouts.

8590065672 = 0x0002 0002 0008

http://www.google.com/search?q=8590065672+in+hex

Was your drive in an external enclosure? Alternatively, have you just recently written new data beyond the 2TiB point?

Can you show us the Partitions window in DMDE (freeware disc editor)?

http://dmde.com/

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

No it was internal. It was fine and working great. I used GPT to get past the 2TB limit and basically partitioned it 2/3 and one 1/3 ti handle the two old drives. I haven't done anything to it since it crashed other that to run Active Partition Recovery to see the data only. I have the results from that if it helps. I'll download and run DMDE.

Is this what you're looking for? I had a similar problem with a drive a while back and Active Partition Recovery showed the data as bad and I recovered it without a problem.

Smartctl indicates that the full user capacity of the drive is 4TB but DMDE is showing a capacity of only 1.8TB (3519067759 sectors).

In fact the full design capacity of the ST4000VN000 is 7,814,037,168 LBAs. Smartctl is actually reporting a capacity of 4,000,785.948,160 bytes which corresponds to 7,814,035,055 sectors. I suspect that you may have a Gigabyte BIOS which steals 2113 sectors from the end of the drive for its backup purposes (Xpress Recovery BIOS). If so, then be aware of the following bug:

GigaByte BIOS bug results in loss of 1TB capacity:
http://malthus.mooo.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=150

Your GPT partitioning is showing a max LBA of 7814037167 in sector 1. This means that the drive was partitioned on a system where the BIOS did not reserve a Host Protected Area (HPA) for itself. You need to remove this HPA using an appropriate tool, eg SeaTools, HDAT2.

The next problem is that the drive is affected by a 32-bit LBA limitation, most probably in the SATA driver.

4TB - 2TiB = 1.8TB

I suspect that the 4TB and 3TB drives were both partitioned and formatted in a 48-bit LBA capable environment and then transferred to a 32-bit LBA limited environment. Essentially this creates a data loss time bomb. Everything proceeds OK until you attempt to write data beyond the 2TiB point. As soon as you do this, the data wrap around to sector 0 and trash your file system. At least that's what I think happens.

I suspect that you may have reverted to an earlier SATA driver. This can happen if you move the drive to a different machine, or if you change the mode of the SATA controller in BIOS (AHCI/RAID/IDE). Hopefully all that you need to do is to update the SATA driver and recover those sectors stolen by your BIOS.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks! So the drives are fine other than Gigabyte foolishness and the possible data lose. How do I stop this from happening? Turn of the BIOS restore is the first step but why did it do it on these drives? They're only for storage of my music? Why didn't it do it on C:? Also why did they work fine and suddenly stop? Is the BIOS only backed up occasionally? I have a 2TB WD with the same problems. So I guess these explain why. No the drive have only been used on the same computer but I used Paragon Partition Manager on the 3TB and 2TB it didn't see the 4TB. I haven't changed anything in the BIOS (AHCI/RAID/IDE) that I know of.

DMDE is recovering only trash for the most part and on the 4TB drive and the 3. I'm getting better result with Active File Recovery on the 3TB. Should I send return the 4TB, I have until the 31st, or send it to Seagate for their data recovery? Since the primary (second partition on the 4TB) and the back up, 3TB, are trashed I'm really concerned about getting the music off these drives. This may seem crazy but collect the music is what kept me as close to sane for a couple of years will going through a spate of depression.

Thank you, thank you for all your help.

BIOS appears to violate the drive that appears first in the boot order. If you've changed the boot order, or if drive C: has disappeared from BIOS, then BIOS will have violated the next drive in the boot order. At least that's how I understand it.

As for data recovery, you will not recover your data as long as the drive's full capacity is not being detected. You MUST update your SATA controller driver, eg Intel RST or similar. Alternatively, boot from a Ubuntu Live CD and recover your data that way.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

The driver update is the confusing part. Gigabyte doesn't make it easy and the only driver that I can find are for "AMD SATA RAID/SATA AHCI Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)" The only installed drivers in device manager are the Microsoft ones under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers".

I found the "GIGABYTE Download Center". The only drivers it shows that I need to update are for the "Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC Driver".

64-bit AMD Chipset Drivers Download (Crimson Edition 15.12, 12/17/2015, Windows 10/8.1/7 (64-bit)):
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/c ... ws+10+-+64

32-bit AMD Chipset Drivers Download (Crimson Edition 15.12, 12/17/2015, Windows 10/8.1/7 (32-bit)):
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/c ... ws+10+-+32

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks! If you were closer I'd offer you some Texas BBQ and beer!

Those links are for Windows 7 and up this is what I found that works on XP:

AMD Chipset Drivers 24.4 MB 13.4 04/24/2013 Download
Description:
Supports Windows XP (32-bit & 64-bit)

Package Includes:
AMD Chipset Drivers
AMD AHCI Driver
AMD USB 3.0 Driver

As soon as I can get the drive problem resolved I'm going to upgrade. I made a terrible mistake and cloned onto the source drive, the 3TB, because of finances I've haven't had the funds to get all the drives that I need to get everything back up. I use Folder Marker for additional file colors and icons to keep track of the good and bad folders on the drive. I want to get everything restored before I upgrade in case something goes wrong and Folder Marker doesn't work.

Be aware that you must use Windows XP 64-Bit, not 32-bit.

https://www.microsoft.com/resources/doc ... table.mspx


See also ...

Windows and GPT FAQ:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... 35(v=vs.85).aspx

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I've had that 3TB since July 2012.

After getting a kick in the stomach and owing $1300 on my tax return I'm trying to get this done. I just bought another 3TB drive to back up the data on this one should I just clone it or do it cluster by cluster?

The problem on both drives went away when I re-installed Paragon GPT Loader.