My "Dedicated Movie Drive" gone....

[Zachboy]

Hi,

Um....just today, I found out my 3TB SATA HDD just "unformatted and unallocated space" itself while I was investigating the performance vs. quality over my 8400GS play Blu-ray quality movies!

:'(Does this mean the end of the world? I had rare and precious movies I had backed up on there alone....I even had some custom designed by myself.....

...so much for "backing" up movies on the 3TB HDD.....

I even tried Puppy Linux in hope that it detects what windows didn't...and it was the same..."unallocated space" on the HDD...would you like to format it? Obviously the answer is "No", not until I somehow recover all those backed up movies...........



Thanks in advance.

 

[tweakboy]

What brand hard drive is it ?

You always put backups in external drive. This 3TB was your local drive you needed to back this up with a external that has a on and off switch... gl

 

[TemjinGold]

I would try to plug it into a different computer if that's possible to see if the movies are still there (in case your Windows is just borked.) If that doesn't work and those movies are really valuable to you, you might want to look into a data recovery service.

 

[tweakboy]

If the drive is broken , for about 1k or soo you pay they recover your data... gl

 

[tommo123]

it's not broken if windows detects it, something just borked the partition. had it happen myself. don't do a thing to it and run some recovery software. you'll need another 3TB drive of course. most if not all data would probably be recoverable

keep the recovery as well for a month or 2 in case the drive is spassing. mine kept on doing it every few weeks and eventually failed. (checked sata cables and ports etc in case they were causing corruption - but it was the drive)

good luck

 

[Zachboy]

What brand hard drive is it ?

Western Digital...."Green" Cavier....or something...

You always put backups in external drive. This 3TB was your local drive you needed to back this up with a external that has a on and off switch... gl

Then I'd need to buy another "dedicated 3TB external movie HDD"....

No, the 3TB wasn't my only local drive...it was my "dedicated movie drive"....I had another HDD in it as well which was the OS one and programs and stuff.

I would try to plug it into a different computer if that's possible to see if the movies are still there (in case your Windows is just borked.) If that doesn't work and those movies are really valuable to you, you might want to look into a data recovery service.

If Puppy said that it was "unallocated", what makes you think other computers will say it is "allocated"? ...though I might take your advise, and see if the HDD is said "unallocated" or a window saying: "do you want to format now?" on another working computer....

The data recovery service is gonna cost me 5 - 10 times this HDD, I bet!

it's not broken if windows detects it, something just borked the partition. had it happen myself. don't do a thing to it and run some recovery software. you'll need another 3TB drive of course. most if not all data would probably be recoverable

All the ones that "work" by user reviews that I know of are paid ones.....

I only had the HDD for less than a year I think.....maybe if I find my receipt for this, it will tell me exactly, to days, how long I had it for....

 

[Charlie98]

I'm building my HTPC drive right now, my largest is 1TB only. I plan on cloning the drives when I'm done with the basic fill as a backup. Yes, this means I'll probably have 2 or 3 drives just for backup alone, but I understand that is the price of admission, so to speak.

I don't plan on using any 'green' drives, from what I have been reading they are a disaster waiting to happen.

I would agree, drop it into another computer and see if it will pull up there, if not, and the data is worth it to you... go for data recovery.

Can you run CKDSK? I don't know if that is possible or if it would do any good, but at that point it may be worth a try.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

There are tools that may be able to recover the partition. I use one called "Data Rescue" but that's on a Mac. Works pretty well. Some of your data may end up being corrupted though.

I had rare and precious movies I had backed up on there alone

If you had all of your movies stored on a single drive, and nowhere else, you didn't have a backup. In the most simplistic terms, a backup = >2 copies on >2 separate devices. Anything less is not a backup.

Anyway, lesson learned. Buy extra HDs or contract with a cloud storage provider like BackBlaze.

 

[Batmeat]

I've used PC Inspector before with great success. It was a free download, not sure now. Google it and give it a try.

 

[Zachboy]

I'm building my HTPC drive right now, my largest is 1TB only. I plan on cloning the drives when I'm done with the basic fill as a backup. Yes, this means I'll probably have 2 or 3 drives just for backup alone, but I understand that is the price of admission, so to speak.

I just only got one 3TB HDD that's dedicated to movies alone....and another that's dedicated to the OS and the programs installed...

I don't plan on using any 'green' drives, from what I have been reading they are a disaster waiting to happen.

..."disaster"..? ..like the one I just got now?

I would agree, drop it into another computer and see if it will pull up there, if not, and the data is worth it to you... go for data recovery.

Hm, on my dedicated storage computer, I see the icon HDD and is mounted...but doesn't want to open it....I've attached a screenshot(from my dedicated storage computer):

As you can see above...at least the icon is shown on this one, but it's definitely "Unallocated" by my dedicated storage computer....

Can you run CKDSK? I don't know if that is possible or if it would do any good, but at that point it may be worth a try.

...in "run" box or through "cmd"? Does it matter? Wouldn't that...um....do something to it making it worse as it's in the "unallocated" state?

Hm, it would appear the drive was created on the 22nd of September 2011...and I am sure I bought it somewhere after that, either in September or October....so that's just less than 10 months I had it for - not even a year! Damn...can't find my receipt....don't even remember where I put it...I'll look some more...

 

[_Rick_]

Step 1) Buy three more 3TB HDD.
Step 2) Use dd_rescue (for example from the system rescue disk linux distribution) to clone the existing HDD to one of the new HDD. Do not mess up target and source, or you will have messed things up mightily. Clone the newly written-to disk again to a third disk.
Step 3) Use testdisk to attempt recovery on one of the new HDDs.
If anything goes wrong, use one of the images on one of the new disks for recovery, after the inital read, do not go back to the old disk, until you are certain that you have recovered all data.
Step 4) If you recover a filesystem, copy the data to the fourth, clean HDD, where you have created a new partition from scratch.
Once you have verified that you have saved everything you could:
Set up two of the 3TB drives as mirrors in RAID1. Copy the recovered files to a that volume.
Set up the other two 3TB drives in another computer as a RAID1. Use this as backup.

If those movies are worth more than your house, then you might want to consider offsite storage as well. Otherwise it's a waste.

Good luck.

 

[Zachboy]

Step 1) Buy three more 3TB HDD.
Step 2) Use dd_rescue (for example from the system rescue disk linux distribution) to clone the existing HDD to one of the new HDD. Do not mess up target and source, or you will have messed things up mightily. Clone the newly written-to disk again to a third disk.
Step 3) Use testdisk to attempt recovery on one of the new HDDs.
If anything goes wrong, use one of the images on one of the new disks for recovery, after the inital read, do not go back to the old disk, until you are certain that you have recovered all data.
Step 4) If you recover a filesystem, copy the data to the fourth, clean HDD, where you have created a new partition from scratch.
Once you have verified that you have saved everything you could:
Set up two of the 3TB drives as mirrors in RAID1. Copy the recovered files to a that volume.
Set up the other two 3TB drives in another computer as a RAID1. Use this as backup.

If those movies are worth more than your house, then you might want to consider offsite storage as well. Otherwise it's a waste.

Good luck.

Three more??!! Oh god....

Just go over the steps in more detail...the three 3 TB HDD...I "might" be able to get....geez around at max $200 x 3 = $600 spent on those HDDs alone....

 

[tweakboy]

it's not broken if windows detects it, something just borked the partition. had it happen myself. don't do a thing to it and run some recovery software. you'll need another 3TB drive of course. most if not all data would probably be recoverable

keep the recovery as well for a month or 2 in case the drive is spassing. mine kept on doing it every few weeks and eventually failed. (checked sata cables and ports etc in case they were causing corruption - but it was the drive)

good luck

Oh I didnt know. so windoz shows it , its just empty , hmmmmmmmmm try this in windows ,, go to command prompt,,, type "chkdsk" . Let us know what happens when you run chkdsk , can you go to it in dos mode

 

[KingFatty]

Good chance the data is still there, but something is messed up with the partition information.

There may be a utility that can ignore/look past the messed up partition information and go right to the raw info on the disk. Then it could analyze everything exhaustively, and rebuild the partition information.

But, if you start writing stuff to the disk, you might mess that up.

Another possibility is the electronics are messed up, but the data is fine. Maybe you could get another exact same disk, and swap the electronics. However, I don't think this is the situation because why would the disk show up in gparted as unallocated?

who knows, but start looking for utilities that can analyze the disk without writing to it, as well as disregard the existing partition info and try to reconstruct new partition info by analyzing the raw disc data. Sorry I don't have any specific names for applications that can do this, more of a cheerleading post to give you hope that it can be recovered.

 

[Zachboy]

Good chance the data is still there, but something is messed up with the partition information.

That's what I feel too...

There may be a utility that can ignore/look past the messed up partition information and go right to the raw info on the disk. Then it could analyze everything exhaustively, and rebuild the partition information.

Hm, I bet the one that does exactly this is "paid"....

But, if you start writing stuff to the disk, you might mess that up.

This, I am aware of, that's why I didn't want to "format" it again, not unless I somehow recover those movies....

Another possibility is the electronics are messed up, but the data is fine. Maybe you could get another exact same disk, and swap the electronics. However, I don't think this is the situation because why would the disk show up in gparted as unallocated?

Seems like a viable option, but I'm not the person who knows "Electronics" to do any of that stuff....

who knows, but start looking for utilities that can analyze the disk without writing to it, as well as disregard the existing partition info and try to reconstruct new partition info by analyzing the raw disc data. Sorry I don't have any specific names for applications that can do this, more of a cheerleading post to give you hope that it can be recovered.

Hm, like Nero creating an ISO image from CDs/DVDs?

Oh I didnt know. so windoz shows it , its just empty , hmmmmmmmmm try this in windows ,, go to command prompt,,, type "chkdsk" . Let us know what happens when you run chkdsk , can you go to it in dos mode

Below here is my "cmd" status....

Below is what it says when I try to access my 3TB HDD....

 

[_Rick_]

Three more??!! Oh god....

The reasons for having three are as follows:

You do not want to touch your original disk anymore, after the initial clone. The disk may well be eating sectors on every spin, or the controller might die - data loss in the way you experienced is never a good sign.

The first new disk houses the image of the original disk. This one you don't want to touch, except cloning to the "working disk". This will be your base state, as for the time being, you can't get closer to the original data, than what is on this disk.
The second new disk houses your working image. On this image you will attempt reconstruction efforts. test disk may recover the partition header. File system checks may fix files. You will recover the files you lost from this image.
The third disk is your target disk for the recovery. Here you can create a clean file system, and copy file by file to this disk, verify the coherency of individual files, and then judge whether your recovery was sufficient.

None of these disks can be left out, as you cannot be sure that your attempts to fix data can be saved.
None of these disks is wasted, as you can use them for maintaining on- and offsite back ups and make the local data more reliably available.

The exact tools you will require are a linux distribution that comes with dd_rescue (man dd_rescue to see how it works).
This will create a copy of one disk to another disk.
Then testdisk will help with the recovery of partitions. It's not exactly a graphical interface that you'll get, but it's mostly understandable.
Having enough disks, means you can doe a lot of trial and error, if you don't mess up the initial dd_rescue.
Can't provide more detail, as this depends on your specific hardware configuration. Look up the tools I named, they aren't that technical.

Don't swap electronics btw, calibration data is written into a flash chip on the disk, so you'd probably have to start soldering chips from one board to another...let's not go there...

And also, if your data has any worth, don't do anything to your original disk, until you've got a an as perfect as possible copy. Then work only on the copy of that copy.
Serious data means serious outlay

 

[Zachboy]

If you had all of your movies stored on a single drive, and nowhere else, you didn't have a backup. In the most simplistic terms, a backup = >2 copies on >2 separate devices. Anything less is not a backup.

Anyway, lesson learned. Buy extra HDs or contract with a cloud storage provider like BackBlaze.

Um, I also had the original "disc" copy of those movies as well....except that some of the original ones were scratched and, sort of screwed in a way that the DVD player won't play them anymore...so I chucked them out....leaving then - only one copy....yes...I guess you can say it's not a backup anymore - but still technically a "backup" as I did from the original DVDs/Blu-ray discs and some movie files I created...

Okay then! - What if both all the HDDs go? What then? I'm screwed! That's what! Haha. - so basically playing Russian roulette with these HDDs...

 

[turn_pike]

I had this friend who connected his external drive to a mac and answered yes when it asked him if he wanted to use the drive as Time Machine backup device.

Luckily the daemon hadnt had the chance to actually fill up the drive before he disconnected it from the mac but the partition it borked.

What I did was use TestDisk which recovered the files but not the file names. He was happy enough to get his movies and pictures back. You might want to try it out. Just make sure you dont actually write anything to the borked drive. Read from that drive using TestDisk and write the recovered files somewhere else, buy / borrow another drive if you dont have the free space in your current drive(s).

 

[Burner27]

There is a free app called RECUVA that may enable you to recover your files.. Worth a shot?

 

[Smoblikat]

Get DATA recovermyfiles has worked for me when I formatted my 2Tb drive. I got back all of my rod documents and zip files. But none of my movies.................maybe it will work better for you?

 

[Zachboy]

There is a free app called RECUVA that may enable you to recover your files.. Worth a shot?

Hold on, hold on...I'm going to do this in chronological order...first - PC Inspector, then what _Rick_ suggests (hm, looks like I do need to have atleast three 3TB HDDs....) and then RECUVA from Piriform. Or maybe skip Rick's idea and straight to yours, I had already came up with that idea, but due to pass experiences with it, I didn't bring it up; though, I will try again in case the last times were flukes.

Hm....Anyone wanna fork over $600 to me? Hahaha:sneaky:

Ahh, I really should get a job to pay for things like these.....my parents won't fork over that much to me anyways....not unless it's "educational" related....but in some ways it is, in that I am learning, teaching myself with the guidance if you guys. But of course from past experiences with them, usually things that are computer related tend to be a "No"....especially games...

Get DATA recovermyfiles has worked for me when I formatted my 2Tb drive. I got back all of my rod documents and zip files. But none of my movies.................maybe it will work better for you?

From here: http://www.recovermyfiles.com/?

 

[Elixer]

Step 1) Buy three more 3TB HDD.
Step 2) Use dd_rescue (for example from the system rescue disk linux distribution) to clone the existing HDD to one of the new HDD. Do not mess up target and source, or you will have messed things up mightily. Clone the newly written-to disk again to a third disk.
Step 3) Use testdisk to attempt recovery on one of the new HDDs.
If anything goes wrong, use one of the images on one of the new disks for recovery, after the inital read, do not go back to the old disk, until you are certain that you have recovered all data.
Step 4) If you recover a filesystem, copy the data to the fourth, clean HDD, where you have created a new partition from scratch.
Once you have verified that you have saved everything you could:
Set up two of the 3TB drives as mirrors in RAID1. Copy the recovered files to a that volume.
Set up the other two 3TB drives in another computer as a RAID1. Use this as backup.

If those movies are worth more than your house, then you might want to consider offsite storage as well. Otherwise it's a waste.

Good luck.

If you want the proper way to do it, then listen to this.
If you want to throw the dice, then I would use testdisk (free). I have had that rebuild the drive's partition table many times on many computers.

Note, there is also malware that goes around doing crap like that as well...

 

[Blintok]

sux when that happens but not sure if it same program mentioned above
but the program getdataback saved me in similar circumstance http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm

and these days for important files like a ton of movies i have them backed up 4 x
I have 3 WD external drives. 1 is called backup. 1 is called vault. 1 is working with my WD media player.

Vault i never use except to put things on to keep forever. backup is essentially a copy of vault but used more often. The working drive is used all the time to view movies via the media player. the 4th backup is on my computer and also used all the time to play movies via network to media player.

Vault and backup also contain other files like pictures from trips etc.
and even with all that back up i am considering using online storage like Carbonite as well.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Um, I also had the original "disc" copy of those movies as well....except that some of the original ones were scratched and, sort of screwed in a way that the DVD player won't play them anymore...so I chucked them out....leaving then - only one copy....yes...I guess you can say it's not a backup anymore - but still technically a "backup" as I did from the original DVDs/Blu-ray discs and some movie files I created...

It is not a backup, since you only had one copy. Period. Don't even use the word.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as mean. This is "SRS BIZNISS" - managing backups and minimizing the risk of data loss is an area where a lot of people make a lot of money, because there's a lot of very important data out there.

Okay then! - What if both all the HDDs go? What then? I'm screwed! That's what! Haha. - so basically playing Russian roulette with these HDDs...

If you have stuff on multiple HDDs, they rarely fail at the same time. When one dies, you replace it with a new drive and copy everything over from the other.

Data integrity costs money.

The problem with HDDs is that they have moving parts, and it's not a question of if they fail, but when.

 

[Zap]

...so much for "backing" up movies on the 3TB HDD.....

Why do you think you were "backing up" your movies if that was your only copy? Multiple copies of the same data = a backup.

How much money you spend on it depends on how important it was for you. At minimum if you want to try recovery software, you'll want a separate drive to store the recovered data onto. It does not have to be 3TB. It only has to be big enough to hold the data you want recovered.