HDD crashed, showing as Unknown Device

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  1. Posts : 7
    w10
       #1

    HDD crashed, showing as Unknown Device


    Hello,

    My seagate 2TB internal HDD suddenly crashed after a couple of days of weird loading.


    The main problem I have is that the device is showing as Unknown Device on device manager. If i try to uninstall / Scan Hardware Changes, it just disappears. If I disable / enable, stays the same as unknown device. I reboot, and again it shows as Unknown Device but cannot do much. If I try to run any software to recover data, it won't see the drive so I cannot do it.

    Device Manager:

    DISK DRIVES
    SSD Drive (shows fine)
    Another HD I have (shows fine)
    UNKNOWN DEVICE

    Also if I go to disk management, it asks me to initialize the drive, which I dont want to do as I need the data that is inside.

    I hope someone can please help me, Id greatly appreciate it (you have no idea!)

    - I tried plugging it into a different PC, it didnt see it.
    - I tried swapping cables with the other HD, no difference.
    - Bios sometimes sees the drive, sometimes doesnt. Regardless of this, it behaves the same on Windows.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 7
    w10
    Thread Starter
       #2

    Is there anyone with any ideas at all? I cannot believe I cannot find in google anything to help me in this situation. A data recovery service is quoting me 500 USD , seriously? For a HDD used LIGHTLY for 2 years!?
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 16,325
    W10Prox64
       #3

    Hi.
    Professional recovery services are expensive, yes.
    You could consider trying Spinrite.
    Steve Gibson SpinRite 6.0 on TechTV - YouTube
    .
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 7
    w10
    Thread Starter
       #4

    simrick said:
    Hi.
    Professional recovery services are expensive, yes.
    You could consider trying Spinrite.
    Steve Gibson SpinRite 6.0 on TechTV - YouTube
    .
    Thanks but spinrite did not work. At least it would stay in the looking for devices screen for 2 hours before i gave up.

    I was able to see the HDD now but it reads the sector so slowly it is ridiculous. I left it overnight and it didnt reach 1 million sectors out of 3.9 billion...
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 16,325
    W10Prox64
       #5

    Professional data recovery may be your only option at this point. They can even physically move the platters out of the drive and onto a new setup in a cleanroom, and try to recover your data that way. It's quite involved, and success depends on the failure mode. But, like I said, it gets expensive. Just depends on how valuable your data is. At one time, I was quoted $1,000 for a failed spinner which had irreplaceable photos, and even though I was ready and willing to pay, they still couldn't recover anything for me.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 7
    w10
    Thread Starter
       #6

    simrick said:
    Professional data recovery may be your only option at this point. They can even physically move the platters out of the drive and onto a new setup in a cleanroom, and try to recover your data that way. It's quite involved, and success depends on the failure mode. But, like I said, it gets expensive. Just depends on how valuable your data is. At one time, I was quoted $1,000 for a failed spinner which had irreplaceable photos, and even though I was ready and willing to pay, they still couldn't recover anything for me.
    it has valuable pictures, but also work documents that I had backed up at work but are confidential. If these docs leak, I can get in serious trouble. So it's a catch 22. I think I would pay the money if I could rest assured no documents would leak

    it has been such a nightmare this experience. I guess I was naive for not backing up data, I have had drives fail on me but never suddenly like this one. Usually I start seeing bad sectors, this one just died. I was able to "fix" the partition table with testdisk, and after reboot windows chkdsk started running and i stopped it (as this took 5 days last time). When I booted now my partition is damaged... I left it this morning running trying to recover the partition, it was going 1 cylinder at a time, out of 200k or so.

    Needless to say I hate seagate with a passion now
    Last edited by geenky; 29 Aug 2016 at 01:03.
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 16,325
    W10Prox64
       #7

    geenky said:
    it has valuable pictures, but also work documents that I had backed up at work but are confidential. If these docs leak, I can get in serious trouble. So it's a catch 22. I think I would pay the money if I could rest assured no documents would leak

    it has been such a nightmare this experience. I guess I was naive for not backing up data, I have had drives fail on me but never suddenly like this one. Usually I start seeing bad sectors, this one just died. I was able to "fix" the partition table with testdisk, and after reboot windows chkdsk started running and i stopped it (as this took 5 days last time). When I booted now my partition is damaged... I left it this morning running trying to recover the partition, it was going 1 cylinder at a time, out of 200k or so.

    Needless to say I hate seagate with a passion now
    Yeah, that one drive of mine that failed gave no warning either.
    I doubt you'd have to worry about your data being leaked from a reputable recovery company. They would go out of business pretty fast if they did that. You could ask for a web address of their T&C; I'm pretty sure they'll have you sign some sort of contract to have the drive recovery done/attempted, and a data privacy statement should be part of it.

    I'm not sure why Spinrite was taking so very long, but, have you tried contacting about it?
    GRC
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 7
    w10
    Thread Starter
       #8

    simrick said:
    Yeah, that one drive of mine that failed gave no warning either.
    I doubt you'd have to worry about your data being leaked from a reputable recovery company. They would go out of business pretty fast if they did that. You could ask for a web address of their T&C; I'm pretty sure they'll have you sign some sort of contract to have the drive recovery done/attempted, and a data privacy statement should be part of it.

    I'm not sure why Spinrite was taking so very long, but, have you tried contacting about it?
    GRC
    I haven't, no.

    At the moment running photorec again, 2 million sectors in 1 day, 3905 million to go. I do hope it starts going faster later or i will need to wait 5 years for this to finish
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 16,325
    W10Prox64
       #9

    geenky said:
    I haven't, no.

    At the moment running photorec again, 2 million sectors in 1 day, 3905 million to go. I do hope it starts going faster later or i will need to wait 5 years for this to finish
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 7
    w10
    Thread Starter
       #10

    oliverpowell said:
    Hi, there are many software available which claims that they can recover data from the uninitialized hard drive, but when we try them, they are unsuccessful in the recovery of data or took hours to complete the scanning process. There is only few software available online which are quite efficient in their task such as Stellar Phoenix professional software, Recuva, EaseUS, etc. These software works very fast to scan the unallocated hard drive and easily recover data from it.
    thanks for the reply, i appreciate it, but I tried EaseUS and it did not work for me. The problem I have is that it shows UNKNOWN DEVICE, not only uninitialized. If I am able to catch the HDD after a 100 reboots, then I just run photorec which is the only software that works for me.
      My Computer


 

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