HELP - External USB Drive Permissions Preventing File Recovery

WubbleGubble · 10 Apr 2020

The situation I have at hand is as follows:

My Seagate 2TB External USB Backup + drive (6 months old) overnight became unusable/ accessible, below are the things I have tried to enable read/write capability so I can reformat the drive to then run a file recovery on.
The drive does not make any strange noises - no clunking, clicking or grinding

EDIT: I wanted to add, If I attempt to access the drive contents from the file explorer, the system returns alerts that the disk is not formatted

HELP - External USB Drive Permissions Preventing File Recovery-needtoformat.png

Which is followed by a Not Available alert:

HELP - External USB Drive Permissions Preventing File Recovery-notavailable.png

When viewing Computer Management, the Seagate drive shows as:

HELP - External USB Drive Permissions Preventing File Recovery-unallocated.png

What I have determined, is that the Seagate has read only permissions
When I access Properties for the drive in question, there is no Security tab, rather I am left with Sharing -> Advanced Sharing which I have utilized attempting to remove read only permissions via the GUI and I receive the following error:

HELP - External USB Drive Permissions Preventing File Recovery-sharing-error.png

At this point, I then attempted making changes VIA command line using DISKPART which returns the following:

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 931 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 1863 GB 1863 GB *

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> attributes disk
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

The above indicates that Read/ Write capability is enabled.

I went ahead and ran: attributes disk clear readonly
which the system returns a success message, even though read/write is still blocked.

I have also edited the Windows Registry according to the following, only in the DWORD I use '0' which should set read/write as true:

How to Enable Write Protection for USB Devices on Windows 10

At either rate, this modification did nothing for me with respect to allowing me to format the drive to then run a recovery on.

I have also attempted using AOMEI Partition Assistant which is supposed to be able to work around the read/write issue?? ... the program would run actions against the disk and while the progress meter only traveled to 10% of the total amount, the program returns a SUCCESS alert, but the drive is still in a read/write protected mode!

Has anyone got any words of wisdom and possible solutions to this situation?

Thanking you in advance for your help

Best Regards

FreeBooter · 10 Apr 2020

The disk have only one partition (F:) which is 5MB in size remaining hard disk space is not partitioned that is why it has Unallocated label.

WubbleGubble · 10 Apr 2020

FreeBooter said:

The disk have only one partition (F:) which is 5MB in size remaining hard disk space is not partitioned that is why it has Unallocated label.

The disk did not start out this way however, it was one functional partition.

zbook · 10 Apr 2020

Had you considered cleaning the drive followed by installation of a NTFS file system?

FreeBooter · 10 Apr 2020

TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions.

TestDisk Download - CGSecurity

spunk · 10 Apr 2020

I can reformat the drive to then run a file recovery on.

First off the drive is now Unallocated Space except for the EFI partition in the front that is 5MB. You can't Format Unallocated Space because there is no file system on this space. If you're trying to recover files from the Unallocated Space, you do not want to create a partition and Format it, that would overwrite the files.
As stated you need a data recovery program like TestDisk, this is the only Free Data recovery program there is. I have had the best luck with GetDataBack you will need another drive of the same size or larger to restore the files to.After safely backing up your files, As for the small partition, you can run the Diskpart Clean Command which will wipe the drive and make it all Unallocated Space, then you can go to Disk Management and right click the Unallocated Space and choose to make a new Simple Volume and partition and format it NTFS. Or you can use a 3rd party app like minitool partition wizard to delete this partition.

WubbleGubble · 10 Apr 2020

zbook said:

Had you considered cleaning the drive followed by installation of a NTFS file system?

I have, but as I have also stated, installation of any file system requires that I can write to that disk

zbook · 10 Apr 2020

Are you planning to troubleshoot lost files/ file recovery?

If not, why not clean the drive?
Then attempt the installation of a file system?

Caledon Ken · 10 Apr 2020

Have you tried on another computer or two other computers.

Assuming you get access to drive do you have somewhere to copy data out too. You have to be ready to copy assuming you get access.

I would not trust this drive for any long term use and Seagate should honour warranty.

WubbleGubble · 10 Apr 2020

spunk said:

First off the drive is now Unallocated Space except for the EFI partition in the front that is 5MB. You can't Format Unallocated Space because there is no file system on this space. If you're trying to recover files from the Unallocated Space, you do not want to create a partition and Format it, that would overwrite the files.
As stated you need a data recovery program like TestDisk, this is the only Free Data recovery program there is. I have had the best luck with GetDataBack you will need another drive of the same size or larger to restore the files to.After safely backing up your files, As for the small partition, you can run the Diskpart Clean Command which will wipe the drive and make it all Unallocated Space, then you can go to Disk Management and right click the Unallocated Space and choose to make a new Simple Volume and partition and format it NTFS. Or you can use a 3rd party app like minitool partition wizard to delete this partition.

Thank you !

I did install testdisk onto a unix box I have and I have. As well I have a 4TB drive that is ready to store all recovered files to in the unix box running samba.
Ok I understand, I was just reading an EASUS article suggesting a quick format would leave files intact only deleting folders in this situation, however I will follow your suggestions here as the drive does not allow any formatting actions whatsoever presently.

My question remaining is: will I be able to format the disk as you suggest after file recovery considering I am unable to take such action against the drive presently? Diskpart is ineffective due to the inability to write to the disk.
These disks come from Seagate formatted as EXFAT.

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zbook said:

Are you planning to troubleshoot lost files/ file recovery?

If not, why not clean the drive?
Then attempt the installation of a file system?

I definitely need to recover these files, so I am going to run testdisk against the Seagate and I will post images and text descriptions of the outcome.

I am unsure how I can add a file system at this time as the disk does not allow writing?

Thank you

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FreeBooter said:

TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions.

TestDisk Download - CGSecurity

I have testdisk on a unix server running against the drive right now, I will post images and results of those tests.

Thank you

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zbook said:

Had you considered cleaning the drive followed by installation of a NTFS file system?

Excuse this question, but is there a way to install a file system when I am unable to write to the disk?
I can't do anything at this time due to permissions that I can't even change.

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Caledon Ken said:

Have you tried on another computer or two other computers.

Assuming you get access to drive do you have somewhere to copy data out too. You have to be ready to copy assuming you get access.

I would not trust this drive for any long term use and Seagate should honour warranty.

I have tried the drive on 4 different PC's each displaying the identical situation.
Yes, I have a 4TB drive ready to receive the files.

Yeah, I am not real happy considering the age of the drive, and it started out kind of rocky actually ... After logging into ToolKit many times the drive would still display being locked, I worked with Seagate support and they had me removing and reinstalling ToolKit multiple times which never resolved any issue.