Help retrieving data off faulty drive...please

[KlyRuu]

The other day my pc froze up and I turned it off as I was going out anyway. The next day when I turn it on it is making a clicking like sounds that are coming from the HDD and instead of windows loading it tries a disk check automatically. I let it run and it freezes on 9% so after a good while I turn the pc off and leave it for the day as I didn't have time to fix it then. So today I have time to properly diagnose and fix the issue but I have struggled greatly. I have tried many combinations of turning it on with it not plugged in and plugging it in after. Changing bios settings to allow hot swap of SATA, tried different ports on mobo, different and brand new sata cables, tried using the drive in another PC but i am having the exact same result. After a while the drive started showing up so I immediately tried to copy the data off the drive onto my other larger drive. This crashed the pc and after turning it back on again I saw that while it shows the first folders they all say they are empty once clicked on. I play around a bit more as it is now showing in device manager and try running dskchk but it either says it does not support RAW  format or cannot access that location or something. I have tried repairing the drive through windows and it says errors were found but cannot be repaired please try again. Sometime during playing around with it it started to show all files in the folders and i again tried to start moving files(in much smaller quantities this time) but it would take a long time to bring up the transfer window then after being on preparing files for a long time it would just close, no errors or anything just closed the window.  I have tried running in safe mode with no changes. There is probably more I have tried but cant remember as I have been at this for hours. I am still hopeful that I it will work given the right thing as it is still sometimes being picked up in windows and showing files now even. It also sometimes is seen and can be accessed but sometimes it will just freeze everything up and then if you unplug it everything goes back to normal. Almost feels like a virus is controlling it and while I haven't done a virus check yet on it I dont think that can be the cause?

 

Thank you very much and hoping someone will be able to help me fix this ASAP

 

Also maybe good to note, this data is 2.5tb of my last 4 years of PC history and while its worth alot to me i cant justify sending it off to a data repair company.

 

[kelvinhall05]

3 minutes ago, KlyRuu said:

i cant justify sending it off to a data repair company

That kinda sucks, because this is definitely a hardware issue, which can't be solved by just trying to load Windows. Try and email Drivesavers.

[Radium_Angel]

15 minutes ago, KlyRuu said:

The other day my pc froze up and I turned it off as I was going out anyway. The next day when I turn it on it is making a clicking like sounds that are coming from the HDD and instead of windows loading it tries a disk check automatically. I let it run and it freezes on 9% so after a good while I turn the pc off and leave it for the day as I didn't have time to fix it then. So today I have time to properly diagnose and fix the issue but I have struggled greatly. I have tried many combinations of turning it on with it not plugged in and plugging it in after. Changing bios settings to allow hot swap of SATA, tried different ports on mobo, different and brand new sata cables, tried using the drive in another PC but i am having the exact same result. After a while the drive started showing up so I immediately tried to copy the data off the drive onto my other larger drive. This crashed the pc and after turning it back on again I saw that while it shows the first folders they all say they are empty once clicked on. I play around a bit more as it is now showing in device manager and try running dskchk but it either says it does not support RAW  format or cannot access that location or something. I have tried repairing the drive through windows and it says errors were found but cannot be repaired please try again. Sometime during playing around with it it started to show all files in the folders and i again tried to start moving files(in much smaller quantities this time) but it would take a long time to bring up the transfer window then after being on preparing files for a long time it would just close, no errors or anything just closed the window.  I have tried running in safe mode with no changes. There is probably more I have tried but cant remember as I have been at this for hours. I am still hopeful that I it will work given the right thing as it is still sometimes being picked up in windows and showing files now even. It also sometimes is seen and can be accessed but sometimes it will just freeze everything up and then if you unplug it everything goes back to normal. Almost feels like a virus is controlling it and while I haven't done a virus check yet on it I dont think that can be the cause?

 

Thank you very much and hoping someone will be able to help me fix this ASAP

 

Also maybe good to note, this data is 2.5tb of my last 4 years of PC history and while its worth alot to me i cant justify sending it off to a data repair company.

 

I did data recovery for a living.

The more you muck about with it, the more expensive it becomes when you give up and finally send it to a data recovery place.

It's going to cost you some money either way...

[samcool55]

What i would do is create a live USB with ubuntu or something, boot from that and try to copy data that way.

 

[Catsrules]

I have used Ddrescue is a good place to start if you looking for free recovery software. It will basically try to clone the drive, so you will need to have a spare hard drive or a drive with enought free space for the entire drive to fit on it. 

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/

 

Wendell from Level1tech did a overview of data recovery long time ago.
 

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

39 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

What i would do is create a live USB with ubuntu or something, boot from that and try to copy data that way.

 

 

33 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

I have used Ddrescue is a good place to start if you looking for free recovery software. It will basically try to clone the drive, so you will need to have a spare hard drive or a drive with enought free space for the entire drive to fit on it. 

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/

 

Wendell from Level1tech did a overview of data recovery long time ago.
 

 

 

The longer he plays around with this, the worse it will become, and the more expensive it will be when it's eventually sent to a drive recovery specialist. It's like working on your own car, before giving it up and dragging it to a mechanic. He has to undo all the mess you made, to get back to the original problem, and this takes time and costs money.

[Catsrules]

11 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

 

The longer he plays around with this, the worse it will become, and the more expensive it will be when it's eventually sent to a drive recovery specialist. It's like working on your own car, before giving it up and dragging it to a mechanic. He has to undo all the mess you made, to get back to the original problem, and this takes time and costs money.

I agree, but OP saids they can't justify sending it to a data recovery so clearly the data isn't valuable enough to throw $1000+ at. If that is off the table. The only options are throw away the drive, put it in a drawer and forget about it, or try the long shot of recovering the data themselves.

 

Although I do agree with you most people end up needing something off the drive really bad. So it is probably a good idea putting it in a drawer for a year and see if you really really need a file off the drive. If do you pay the money, if not pull it out and try to self recover maybe you will get lucky.