Lost partition on an external drive

I agree, the first stage at 3 days run time is a bit scary.

Ex: On Win7 a "sane" 250GB Hard disk took 8 minutes to reach stage 4 and reported 10% completed, then took 3 hours to complete stage 4 an 5.

The disk has poor performance (60MB/s) stage 4: Recovery of bad blocks in occupied area is very slow, then stage 5: Recovery of bad blocks in free space goes faster. It depends on how much data is on there.

But I was never able to hold my breath that long

@jumanji, Give HDAT2 a glance, it has a Demo that runs in Windows, so you can familiarize with the commands available. The last version date from 2021, the only down side is it needs to run in real time. but it has the most extensive recovery functions one can dream of.

HDAT2/CBL Hard Disk Repair Utility

I always have it side by side with Spinrite, Testdisk and HDD Regenerator.

MaloK said:

... The disk has poor performance (60MB/s) stage 4...

Maybe the disk was connected through a USB 2.0 connection. A USB 3.0 (5 gigabits/s) connection should always be used in these operations, obviously. It´s not clear what connection is being used in the case discussed in this thread.

Anibor said:

Maybe the disk was connected through a USB 2.0 connection. A USB 3.0 (5 gigabits/s) connection should always be used in these operations, obviously. It´s not clear what connection is being used in the case discussed in this thread.

it was an ex: It's a old sata2 HDD and in real life it goes 54MB/s on any ports. I think it's pretty good for a 16 heads 63 sectors disk.

it's right that OP did not mention the type of connection used... But it's too late now.

Hello, here is an update on CHKDSK
It is Progressing but very slow

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19043.1466]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>CHKDSK f: /f /v /r /x
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is easystore.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
File record segment 8500 is unreadable.
File record segment 8501 is unreadable.
File record segment 8502 is unreadable.
File record segment 8503 is unreadable.
File record segment 196BC is unreadable.
File record segment 196BD is unreadable.
File record segment 196BE is unreadable.
File record segment 196BF is unreadable.
File record segment 255C4 is unreadable.
File record segment 255C5 is unreadable.
File record segment 255C6 is unreadable.
File record segment 255C7 is unreadable.
File record segment 26BD4 is unreadable.
File record segment 26BD5 is unreadable.
File record segment 26BD6 is unreadable.
File record segment 26BD7 is unreadable.
File record segment 276F8 is unreadable.
File record segment 276F9 is unreadable.
File record segment 276FA is unreadable.
File record segment 276FB is unreadable.
File record segment 27C3C is unreadable.
File record segment 27C3D is unreadable.
File record segment 27C3E is unreadable.
File record segment 27C3F is unreadable.
File record segment 28E28 is unreadable.
File record segment 28E29 is unreadable.
File record segment 28E2A is unreadable.
File record segment 28E2B is unreadable.
File record segment 2AEA0 is unreadable.
File record segment 2AEA1 is unreadable.
File record segment 2AEA2 is unreadable.
File record segment 2AEA3 is unreadable.
File record segment 2CF14 is unreadable.
File record segment 2CF15 is unreadable.
File record segment 2CF16 is unreadable.
File record segment 2CF17 is unreadable.
194048 file records processed.
File verification completed.
Phase duration (File record verification): 1.40 days.
720 large file records processed.
Phase duration (Orphan file record recovery): 0.00 milliseconds.
36 bad file records processed.
Phase duration (Bad file record checking): 0.00 milliseconds.

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
Progress: 104201 of 230528 done; Stage: 45%; Total: 0%; ETA: 999:00:00 ..

As you can see total still shows 0% accomplished.

It will reach 10% at stage 4...

I will boldly "but surely" evaluate. It will take over 10 days at this pace.