2TB HD: "Too many bad sectors detected"

[Muse]

That was the verdict that Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics threw down before completing the extended test for my almost 3 year old Western Digital Elements 2TB external USB HDD. I had a ton of backup data on it, undoubtedly some I don't have elsewhere. I'm not sure what, actually, I don't have it referenced in some cases. The warranty on these is 1 year, I believe.

Is there any chance I can retrieve some of that data or am I SOL on this?

 

[Deders]

Does the drive show up in windows at all?

 

[Muse]

Does the drive show up in windows at all?

Yes, it shows up in Disk Management but it doesn't indicate the file system. It says "Healthy" though and indicates the drive capacity.

The drive is there in Explorer but when I click on it I get this message:

H: is not accessible.

The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Getdataback ntfs is one possibility.

I would do a single clone of the drive, ignoring bad blocks, and run data recovery against that instead of flogging a failing drive.

No backups, huh? Sucks. Don't let that happen again. (!)

 

[Muse]

Getdataback ntfs is one possibility.

I would do a single clone of the drive, ignoring bad blocks, and run data recovery against that instead of flogging a failing drive.

No backups, huh? Sucks. Don't let that happen again. (!)

Thanks, I'll try that stuff.

The most important stuff was backed up elsewhere. I'm not sure, I'll have to look concerning the medium tier important stuff, some of that is elsewhere. I think there was some stuff, I think, that was not backed up elsewhere. Not hugely important, but a loss if I can't retrieve it. I'll try. It was sudden, I had no warnings. In the future I think I'll try to run crystaldiskinfo once in a while to get some idea of vulnerability.

 

[Charlie98]

Thanks, I'll try that stuff.

The most important stuff was backed up elsewhere. I'm not sure, I'll have to look concerning the medium tier important stuff, some of that is elsewhere. I think there was some stuff, I think, that was not backed up elsewhere. Not hugely important, but a loss if I can't retrieve it. I'll try. It was sudden, I had no warnings. In the future I think I'll try to run crystaldiskinfo once in a while to get some idea of vulnerability.

As far as HDDs, utilities like CrystalDisk are good, but there is no ruling out a sudden failure like you experienced. I had the same experience with an SSD... ran CD and Magician in the morning with no warnings, drive failed that evening. That's when I became a backup madman.

In addition to what the others recommended, I've also heard you can hook the drive up to a Linux (Ubuntu) system and try to access the files that way. Never tried it (and I might be missing something,) but it's worth looking at if you don't have luck otherwise.

 

[Elixer]

If the drive is still working, as in the system can see it, boot up a linux distro, and clone the drive to another one.
Then, you can use data recovery tools to try and get data back.

However, if you have data you really, really want, then it is best to use pros to recover the data, since, the more times you access the drive, the worse it can get.

 

[Muse]

If the drive is still working, as in the system can see it, boot up a linux distro, and clone the drive to another one.
Then, you can use data recovery tools to try and get data back.

However, if you have data you really, really want, then it is best to use pros to recover the data, since, the more times you access the drive, the worse it can get.

Thank you. I wholeheartedly agree with the first line of your signature. The second I recognize as Winston Churchill, I have quoted him saying that a time or two, and recently.

I haven't played with Linux, but have downloaded a distro in the past with a mind to give it a whirl. I'll see what I can do with this. There's a lot of data on the drive, cloning it would require a big drive, but I figure I have to buy a replacement anyway. First thing I could do with it is do the clone, presumably using either Ghost 2003 (maybe not such a hot idea since that app has had difficulties with big external drives, in my experience), or WD edition of True Image, or I could pony up the $30 and get the enhanced version, something I've been strongly considering anyway.

Getdataback ntfs is one possibility.

I would do a single clone of the drive, ignoring bad blocks, and run data recovery against that instead of flogging a failing drive.

No backups, huh? Sucks. Don't let that happen again. (!)

Thanks, never heard of Getdataback, will investigate.

What kind of "data recovery" procedure could I employ? Hints?

 

[jkauff]

If the partition table is the problem, you could try gparted (the download is an ISO image with a bootable Linux distro you can burn to a CD) or EaseUS Partition Master to try rebuilding it. IIRC, the EaseUS tool lets you undo changes while gparted does not, if you don't want to clone the drive first. EaseUS also has data recovery software.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What kind of "data recovery" procedure could I employ? Hints?

Step 1: Find another drive of larger capacity than the dying one.

Step 2: Create a Linux Boot LiveCD or LiveUSB

Step 3: Connect both drives to the computer.

Step 4: Open the CLI. Enter fdisk -l to list disks, drives, partitions.

Step 5: Identify the old drive (/dev/sdX in the example below) and the new bigger driver (/dev/sdY) - the names will vary.

Step 6: Do this - dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY conv=noerror,sync

Step 7: Wait.

Step 8: Shutdown, disconnect the old hard drive and reboot into Windows.

Step 9: Run data recovery tool of your choice on the cloned drive. Corrupted files are, of course, corrupted, but everything else should be recoverable.

 

[phis6]

Well, I agree with what Elixer said. Try using ddrescue in Linux to clone your drive first since it is able to bypass bad sectors while cloning. Nice information and tutorial on how to do it here:
http://www.kossboss.com/linux---how...known-as-gddrescue---the-better-ddrescue-tool

 

[Elixer]

I don't think a straight clone will work with true image or ghost, since, it might be spewing out errors, and, last I looked, those aborted when they got any errors.

As step 6 of dave_the_nerd's post is key in this, you don't want it to error out.
Also, as phis6 points out, ddrescue does basically the same as dave_the_nerd's steps.

Good luck.

 

[_Rick_]

ddrescue is better than dd, as it will skip a few sectors after the first read error, as surface errors tend to cluster, especially when they're the product of head crashes, and thus rescue more data in less time, and with less risk of crashing the HDD controller by venturing into suspected bad areas of the disk, where the controller might get bogged down or the SATA controller might time-out the disk. Yet it will attempt to recover unreadable sectors, I think even with multiple tries to read each sector, in the latter stages of the recovery process.

Another step missing in dave_the_nerd's post, is to backup your recovery image, before trying to fix the filesystem on it, as even a small error in this procedure can lead to significant further data loss, and re-recovering from the broken disk is slow, and may fail/ may be less successful than the first attempt.

Good luck.

 

[Muse]

-snip-

Step 4: Open the CLI. Enter fdisk -l to list disks, drives, partitions.

-snip-

CLI = command line interface?

At the run dialog I get an error and entering cmd in the run dialog, I get an error also, just testing fdisk -1 on this Windows 7 machine. What am I doing wrong?
- - -
Edit: I do get Disk Management when running fdisk at the Run dialog, but nothing when I run fdisk -1.
- - -

Well, I figure to buy another big USB drive now that one of my 2TB WD Elements drives is belly up, but right now I do have a drive I believe I can use for this data recovery mission, a WD Elements 3TB HD which has only ~45GB on it. I can save its data to another HD and use it temporarily for this project.

Thanks to everyone for contributing to this thread.

Can I get recommendations for a replacement HD that is perhaps less apt to die on me, and out of warranty to boot? I have had the idea of drilling big old holes in the WD Elements' cases, maybe 3/8" or bigger, to facilitate cooling. I realize that this would trash the warranty (1 year), but might go a long way in extending the life of the HDs.

Another step missing in dave_the_nerd's post, is to backup your recovery image, before trying to fix the filesystem on it, as even a small error in this procedure can lead to significant further data loss, and re-recovering from the broken disk is slow, and may fail/ may be less successful than the first attempt.

Good luck.

OK, then, I will need another 3TB drive to backup the first clone. Sounds like smart procedure.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

CLI = command line interface?

At the run dialog I get an error and entering cmd in the run dialog, I get an error also, just testing fdisk -1 on this Windows 7 machine. What am I doing wrong?

See step 2.

I forgot to mention the part where you boot into linux.

Windows doesn't have anything like ddrescue or dd. Unless you pay MOAR MONEYZ.

 

[Muse]

See step 2.

I forgot to mention the part where you boot into linux.

Windows doesn't have anything like ddrescue or dd. Unless you pay MOAR MONEYZ.

OK... thanks for the clarification. Going to have to order a >2TB external HD before I do these things, so I have 2 copies of the clone to deal with in case one gets messed up, i.e. clone the clone. :\ This will be an adventure, but I'm sure it's a good thing to have some experience with. I think the most critical of my data does exist elsewhere, but right now I have only one copy of some of that. Backing up that stuff is high priority right now. I do have the hardware to do that.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Here are some thoughts I have about this -- pertaining to external USB drives. Over the last 12 years, I had either purchased or recycled HDDs for family members (purchased) or myself (recycled) for use in USB enclosures.

The first thing I discovered is that USB enclosures purchased for these purposes are not all the same. Of three different brands I tried, I settled on one Thermaltake model which has proven extremely reliable. And those which I have are all "IDE-to-USB" solutions -- probably not pertinent to anything except to show the enclosure's reliability. The drives range in size from 160GB to 500GB.

The second thing: You can, if you choose, leave these devices running all the time. But the only failures we experienced -- excluding one cheap enclosure of dubious manufacture -- occurred in coincidence with this sort of usage.

People get drives proving "DOA" all the time -- probably at a rate consistent with the manufacturer's QC standards; there is always some small percentage of "light bulbs" which slip off the production line within the sampling level of uncertainty. Yes -- they sample -- they can't test every item produced, other than steps taken during production. Over thirty years, I've had two drives fail after some period of time with careful usage, and one or two more which were failing when I received them. I'm thinking this occurred among a total of maybe 50 or more disks. That leaves a few drives in the hands of family members unaware of things like write-caching, usefulness of a UPS system to protect against power-outages and similar factors.

It's often too easy to either flip the power-switch on an external drive or pull the USB plug before clicking the "safe removal" icon and waiting for the "you can safely remove . . " message.

The external USB drive is designed for mostly backup purposes, but you will find folks with "drive troubles" posting in "help me" forums all the time who run these things 24/7.

The logic also applies to drives in hot-swap caddies of the most reliable manufacture. A little carelessness can go a long way toward explaining data-loss -- and even drive failure.

 

[Muse]

Thoughts in response to last post:

My first USB HD was a Cavalry 500GB. It gave good service for quite a while, wasn't heavily used, basically it was a backup solution and I saved quite a few drive/partition images using Ghost 2003. I discovered later that Ghost 2003 wasn't able to save images to my bigger USB HD's (2TB), so I used the Cavalry still. A 320GB 2.5" HD failed recently in one of my laptops and discovered that the Cavalry had died, this maybe 6 weeks ago or so. Therefore I had to install Windows from scratch on the replacement HD, and have lost other potentially useful Ghost images.

Now, the HD I'm referring to in the OP and discussed in this thread, a WD Elements 2TB USB, has a usage pattern that probably contributed to it's current unusable condition. Besides rather occasional use as a backup for files, it's been the save-to location for my HDTV application, which I've used quite a lot since I got the drive almost 3 years ago. So, for an average of (I'm estimating) 6 hours/week it is written to and read from by my HTPC (mid-tower running WinXP). I keep that data only rarely, it's typically deleted and then new data saved at the rate of ~8GB/hour.

Now, a main reason I'm doing this is because of these factors:

The SATA controller in the HTPC is lousy (an early one, a Silicon Image siI3512), and I had a lot of problems using the internal 500GB SATA HD, not so hot luck using the IDE HDs, the largest being 200GB. I had better luck using the 2TB external USB HD, but even so, I've had many lockups of the computer requiring a reset or power off/on, restart. These, it seems to me, may have taken a toll on the drive in terms of crashes.

I've been intending to rebuild my HTPC around a new MB, etc., one with a decent SATA controller that supports large capacity drives. I think I'll probably have much less (or no) crashing of the HDTV application, and much less of (or none of) the problematic irregularities (in particular a frequent lip-synch issue that others generally don't experience). I'll want a MB that has a few PCI slots -- the HTPC card, a sound card, my PCI modem, unless the MB has a built in modem or I can get my occasional fax requirements working on one of my laptops.

 

[Muse]

I went to Costco about a week ago and picked up 3 of the Seagate 3TB USB 3.0 external Backup Plus HDs, selling for $100 each + tax. Figured I'd have a hard time beating the price, and hopefully it's as good as the other 3TB Seagate USB HDs out there (many different part numbers, this one being SRD00F2 on the enclosure itself, on the box it says STDT3000600). They have 2 year warranty, which beats the Western Digital ELEMENTS drives which are only 1 year.

So, I'm equipped to try to recover data.

Meantime I've hunted around some to see what I do have backed up. Today, I connect the 3TB Western Digital ELEMENTS USB HDD I bought last July (off Tigerdirect) to the machine where it had been residing (a Windows 7 laptop) and the machine reported that the HD was not formatted, would I like to format it now? Well, I say no and connect it to my WinXP desktop, which appears to see it normally. I don't know what to make of this. Crystaldiskinfo has a caution on the drive, it did so over a month ago and the drive has only 300 hours on it! 300 HOURS! The caution was on this specific line:

ID Current Worst Threshold RawValues(6) Attribute Name
05 200...... 200...... 140 ... 000000000002 Reallocated Sectors Count

I am thinking that since this 3TB HD (not the one in the OP, which is 2TB) is within even WD's limited one year warranty I should pursue an RMA. Do you agree?

 

[Elixer]

Yeah, I would RMA it.
Do a advanced replacement, and they will ship you a refurb'ed unit, and you use the same box to ship it back to them, and it comes with a pre-paid package label as well.
Well worth the additional cost to set up the advanced replacement.

 

[Charlie98]

So, I'm equipped to try to recover data.

Meantime I've hunted around some to see what I do have backed up. Today, I connect the 3TB Western Digital ELEMENTS USB HDD I bought last July (off Tigerdirect) to the machine where it had been residing (a Windows 7 laptop) and the machine reported that the HD was not formatted, would I like to format it now? Well, I say no and connect it to my WinXP desktop, which appears to see it normally. I don't know what to make of this. Crystaldiskinfo has a caution on the drive, it did so over a month ago and the drive has only 300 hours on it! 300 HOURS!

Dang...

I bought a Seagate 2TB external... it wound up having a Barracuda in it. I yanked it and it's in the HTPC now as an internal drive...

 

[Muse]

Dang...

I bought a Seagate 2TB external... it wound up having a Barracuda in it. I yanked it and it's in the HTPC now as an internal drive...

Yeah, my HTPC is using a WD ELEMENTS 2TB USB external to write/read HDTV data. Reason is the dang mobo has an early crappy Silicon Image siI3512 SATA controller. I actually get better results using the external HD than the internal 500GB SATA drive.

One of my to-do list projects is to figure out how I'm going to upgrade the machine, starting with the motherboard, of course. I couldn't put a 2TB HD in my current desktop, it wouldn't work, period.

 

[Muse]

Yeah, I would RMA it.
Do a advanced replacement, and they will ship you a refurb'ed unit, and you use the same box to ship it back to them, and it comes with a pre-paid package label as well.
Well worth the additional cost to set up the advanced replacement.

Why would there be an additional cost to do advanced replacement? Where's the charge? Do they charge for that? I know you have to give them a CC number, but why would they charge if they get the drive with the prepaid label?

I'm going to call them now, they needed my invoice to prove purchase in July 2013, the date they had for the warranty was May 2013 and I explained that I bought in July. I sent them that and have given them a few days to update their records.

Here's a question: If I have any sensitive data on the drive (I figure there's some), how do I deal with that? Just delete it? Can I trust them to erase all data for practical purposes before they would consider refurbing out the drive? I don't think they will, but I'm certain that a certain percentage of the drives they get back from RMA's are provided to their customers as refurbs.

Edit: I just called them and requested advanced replacement. No charge was mentioned, but a CC# was exacted from me. Presumably, if I send my current drive back to them within 30 days of receiving the replacement there will be no charges.

The drive they are sending me should be received by next Th or Fri, will be a "recertified" drive. It will extend my current warranty by 90 days. IOW, my current warranty, being to August 1, 2014 by virtue of my having just sent them confirmation of my purchase last July 11, 2013 or so, will be until 8/1/14 + 90 days.

Again, this is a WD 3TB Elements HD, not the 2TB WD Elements referred to in the OP. That one is out of warranty. I am going to try to get data off that drive somehow, using methods suggested in this thread, namely by cloning to a 3TB drive and using some kind of Linux, and etc.

 

[Muse]

Well, I agree with what Elixer said. Try using ddrescue in Linux to clone your drive first since it is able to bypass bad sectors while cloning. Nice information and tutorial on how to do it here:
http://www.kossboss.com/linux---how...known-as-gddrescue---the-better-ddrescue-tool

Ah, that tutorial says near the top: "*Get new drives of the same size as the original (although possible cloning to a bigger drive is unrecommended as its not a true clone and logically might not react equally afterwards)"

Now, elsewhere in this thread it was recommended to clone to a larger drive than the original, and the HDD's I bought recently are all 3TB, whereas the drive I want to rescue data from is 2TB. Hmm. Well, I do have other 2TB HDD's but they aren't unused right now. Can I manage with a 3TB HD for cloning?

Edit: Um, reading further in the linked tutorial, I find it not extremely helpful. The author evidently created it as a guide to help himself, not others, when it comes to cloning drives. Thus, it's less than explicit, and is full of little errors (grammatical, spelling, who knows what else???). I'm going to have to look for a better guide in this...

A google search on "how-to-clone-a-disk-with-ddrescue" turns up a number of sites...

Edit2: This site looks very promising, very good English, what I've read so far seems very clear: http://dimitar.me/clone-disk-drives-with-ubuntu/