restore/backup data from failing HD

darkwhite · 10 Jan 2018

Hello.

Yesterday I noticed a severe and sudden slow-down of my PC. Task manager showed one of the HDs being at 100% usage. SMART showed no errors (yet), so I ran chkdisk over night. Took ages so I bought a new disk to copy my files over. To get around the 100% usage, I did so with help of Knoppix and for a while everything was fine.
Until all of a sudden the disk was no longer accessible. Back at Win10, computer management still shows the HD as "healthy" (which is not true, there were some messages at SMARTctl) but one partition of two on the disk is not accessible. Chkdisk /f showed an ETA of 15 hours and a couple of unreadable segments.

At the same time, the second partition of this disk is still fine and accessible.

I have no doubts that this disk is failing, so my only hope is to recover and copy over as much data as possible. The one partition with the important files cannot be mounted in Knoppix ("magic mismatch" + "can't find valid f2fs in superblock" + recommendation to run chkdisk /f because volume was corrupt/inconsistent) and is not accessible in Windows 10.

Is there still a way to get the most important data off the disk?

Thank you very much in advance.

RolandJS · 10 Jan 2018

You might have to use another computer to download and create a USB and a DVD Puppy Linux, then use its folder and file manager to copy off Data onto any available external media.

zbook · 10 Jan 2018

Consider using another working computer to assess the files on the drive and copy them to a working drive.
External hard drive enclosures are inexpensive.
Remove the internal hard drive > find an external hard drive enclosure on amazon or another retailer
Connect the external hard drive to another computer and move the needed files to another drive.

For all tests post images into the thread.
If there are problems posting image then use one drive or drop box share links.
Take Screenshot in Windows 10 General Tips Tutorials

While it is connected to the working computer you can perform tests on the HD:
HD Tune: http://www.hdtune.com/ Free edition: (Health, Benchmark, Full error scan)
HD Sentinel: Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring Free or trial edition: (overview, SMART, performance, disk surface test)
chkdsk /x /f /r G: (change G: to the applicable letter.
Find the chkdsk report using the information in this link:
Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

darkwhite · 11 Jan 2018

Hello and thank you.

Before trying to copy some data via the linux DVD Knoppix, I had run some tests. SMART showed a failing disk. These two checks for pre-failing (something about bad blocks, I do not remember the name) were with around 450 way beyond the threshold. Unfortunately I did not make screenshots, so I cannot show any pictures. Chkdsk had also shown plenty inaccessible sectors.

I do not know how to move the files. The corrupted disk has to partitions, the first one is still working and accessible, the second one seems to be gone. The linux DVD cannot mount the partition, there will be errors of "missing superblocks". The partitioning tool gparted and the disk manager of Windows 10 will mark the partition as one with a damaged file system.

Is there a way to access and copy the files although the partition seems to be corrupted?

I am worried that any further access will make more damages. Should I really run HD Tune/HD Sentinel or chkdsk? The first two would most probably only confirm that the disk is in a pre-failing condition.

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to mention, the disk is not the system disk, so at least I can still work with the computer.

Also please see a screenshot of disk manager. The selected partition is the damaged one. (disk 4 is the brand new one, I did not yet assign any letters but the disk is perfectly fine)
Attachment 171951

zbook · 11 Jan 2018

The professional route can be expensive but there are some sites that guarantee results or your money back.

One option is to open file explorer >this PC > right click open > left click users folder > identify the needed user > right click copy > paste to another drive that has sufficient capacity for the size of the user folder.
Depending on the size of the folder this could take many hours.
If the whole user folder is too large you can then open the user folder and copy only the files that you need:
contacts, desktop, documents, music, pictures, videos, etc.

darkwhite · 11 Jan 2018

Frankly spoken, I had hoped there were some more things I could do before using "The professional route"...

Those files are not of the user folder, more like a wild collection of data, so I assume it will not work?
Is there no way to get the file system back?

zbook · 11 Jan 2018

This is another link with a problem drive where you may find something: chkdsk gives error code - 726173642e637878 25f - Windows 10 Forums

If you have a large storage drive you can right click copy all of the folders.
Then you have saved all of the files and can work on getting a replacement drive.

topgundcp · 11 Jan 2018

Your F Drive became RAW, that means the MFT (Master File Table) is corrupted. You'd need some Recovery Software to be able to read the RAW partition or reconstruct back to NTFS. Chkdsk won't run if the partition is RAW.

Download a free portable version (don't need to install, just unzip to Desktop and run) of Partition Guru: Partition Guru
Scan the RAW partition to see if it can recover the files. Here's the screen shot, Use file recovery option.

restore/backup data from failing HD-p1.jpg

Another Data Recovery software is:
Hard Drive Data Recovery Software. Free Download Disk Data Recovery Tool - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional
Download the Trial version and scan.

NOTE: The free version/Trial version will allow to scan for lost files but might restrict to recover, in which case you'd have to buy it.