External drive inaccessible and causes computer to freeze

Suui · 24 Nov 2018

Hi!

I have a Seagate external drive (2TB) which is causing me trouble. It is found and listed as Healthy by windows and I can see it's folders, however if I attempt to access any of them explorer freezes. I've tried it in Windows 10, Linux Manjaro and Linux Mint with similar results. It is by no means an old drive. It started happening after an accidental reboot occurred as I was moving files.

I have tried:

chkdsk through terminal and gui and both were unable to run, asking me to restart the process and try again.
Gparted and SeaTools, the former never completes it's disk scan the latter fails both short and long generic scans.
Multiple USB ports, machines and operating systems.

The disk is formatted as exFAT. It spins up and as I said is recognizable by windows as Healthy. It is likely that it would work if I formatted it however it currently holds valuable data which I have no backup of. Any assistance recovering these files would be very much appreciated.

nIGHTmAYOR · 24 Nov 2018

There are few things to try before deeming the disk a media failure :
1 - Try a different USB port
2 - Try a different PC
3 - Try a different USB Cable

If all fail you have a suspect media failure where you can :
1 - Try plugging it into a USB 3 port then disable its "Enhanced Host" mode in USB section * in Device Manager
2 - Try "File Recovery" suites
3 - Try HDD Regenerate (Might take days of down time be ware)

If all fail , seek professional help from data recovery services either official or 3rd party (Might cost you pretty penny)

* Universal Serial Bus Controllers , usually last item in device manager

Suui · 24 Nov 2018

As was evident from my post I already tried multiple computers and I might add I've tried multiple cables and ports too. While I was able to locate Universal Serial Bus Controllers I was unable to figure out how to disable enhanced host. Do you have a suggestion for a file recovery suit? I'm running Seagate File recovery suit at the moment but it seems to be unable to scan it.

Suui · 24 Nov 2018

Tried Ontrack and as soon as I press "hard drive" and next it freezes the program. The second I disconnect the drive it starts responding again.

Berton · 24 Nov 2018

While I was able to locate Universal Serial Bus Controllers I was unable to figure out how to disable enhanced host

You don't want to do that, it's the needed support for USB 2 ports, otherwise you may get only USB 1.1 support which is fine for mice and keyboards, etc. USB 3 ports need drivers installed as they are not usually supported by the BIOS.

As for the drive, it may be usable but the interface inside the case may be the problem. There's 3 things involving External drives, one is the motherboard in the computer, one is the IDE printed circuit board on the drive itself and the third is the interface inside the case that controls the power and data flow to the drive. I have a couple of 1TB drives removed from their case that work fine in a dock.

Suui · 24 Nov 2018

I disassembled it and plugged it straight into the motherboard however as I try to initialize the disk I'm told the request could not be performed due to an I/O device error.

Suui · 24 Nov 2018

Once connected to the motherboard I ran Ontrack and It tells me it detected bad blocks and that Ontrack can't fix it.

nIGHTmAYOR · 24 Nov 2018

skip to hdd regenerator program , can be found downloadable as a stand alone and is also found in hirens cd tools . @Berton the disabling enhanced host is a common trick in recovery , and it does exactly what you stated , it slows down the reading significantly , the result is hdd header gets more time per sector trying to retrieve the data , an enhance to reading accuracy for bad blocks .

Suui · 24 Nov 2018

Running hddregenerator on a bootable usb results in disk not ready error.

nIGHTmAYOR · 24 Nov 2018

for me this is dead end , if it has data you wish to recover then you should contact recovery services . start by the manufacturer service "seagate" they might recommend you a thing or two to do yet before they would ask you to turn in the drive . of course other members of forum might have a trick or two up their sleeves .