Sudden HHD wipe, which was rendered unrecoverable

[ahmedyaser7]

Hi guys,

This is my first post in this forum. I am more of a YouTube guy. I love these guys on LinusTechTips, they taught me a lot.

Anyway I was googling for hours, but I couldn't find a  similar problem nor an obvious solution.

I have a TP-LINK router, Model No. TL-WDR3500. It has a USB plug to which I have connected a 1TB external WD HDD as an FTP server to make files accessible around the house (Couldn't get it to work online anyway). A month ago my dad wanted to access some data stored there. Unfortunately it was stopping half way there in progress. I tried to restart the crappy router but boom! everything was wiped. I connected the HDD to my PC and again nothing was there. I used MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover my data but it was wiped like magic. I waited for a day long and was getting only few, very old and small parts of files, and that's all. Diagnostic tools showed a healthy drive with normal S.M.A.R.T. attributes. Luckily I was able to recover years of data from random backups that I was doing here and there. No data is lost now but I am afraid that I can't use this hard drive again, the same goes for the FTP method.

I am curious to find out how could all the data being wiped out that fast without any trace. I wrote no single bit of data on this HDD till this day. I wish to recover it for the sake of curiosity only. 

THANKS.

[Djole123]

Pro tip: Don't use fonts. Old versions of web browsers may not be able to render them.

 

I guess data recovery service...

[Enderman]

4 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

Pro tip: Don't use fonts. Old versions of web browsers may not be able to render them.

 

I guess data recovery service...

if youre not using a font, then how can i see what you just typed???

 

to the OP, it sounds like the pointers to all the files were wiped, not the files themselves, which is why you were able to recover stuff

 

i would stop using that router and FTP server, just use a regular nas or external HDD

[EmeraldFlame]

Yeah, as @Enderman said it sounds like the pointers just got wiped out somehow. Possibly a bad sector or just some random corruption hit that pointer table. The files themselves may still actually be there and using a program like Pirisoft's Recuva may allow you to access them again.

[ahmedyaser7]

3 hours ago, Djole123 said:

Pro tip: Don't use fonts. Old versions of web browsers may not be able to render them.

 

I guess data recovery service...

Sorry for the font. It looked cool on PC though :v

[ahmedyaser7]

3 hours ago, Enderman said:

if youre not using a font, then how can i see what you just typed???

 

to the OP, it sounds like the pointers to all the files were wiped, not the files themselves, which is why you were able to recover stuff

 

i would stop using that router and FTP server, just use a regular nas or external HDD

Cool. I suppose then, no files could be restored but the hard drive itself is ok, right?

 

as for the router, I was wondering why are there routers that go up to 300$? But no need to wonder anymore with all these freezes, sluggishness and now this ;(

[Enderman]

1 hour ago, ahmedyaser7 said:

Cool. I suppose then, no files could be restored but the hard drive itself is ok, right?

 

as for the router, I was wondering why are there routers that go up to 300$? But no need to wonder anymore with all these freezes, sluggishness and now this ;(

well before using the drive again i would scan it with crystaldiskinfo to make sure its in good condition

 

also there are expensive routers with very high speeds, lots of features, and many channels for tons of devices to use it all at once

thats why they are so expensive