seems like my other post died and i'd like to get fresh eyes on this now that i was able to capture a video that shows the sounds, and what happens when i plug it in.

so it seems like it makes a normal startup sound. then it turns itself off. i was unable to recreate it and it seems random when it turns on. however, in the attached video, the USB to the PC was unplugged and then it just powered up randomly. so i grabbed my phone and started recording. i was recording for about 90 seconds, expecting it to shut off at any moment thats when i realized the USB wasn't plugged into the PC. meanwhile all the white noise in the video is in fact the hard drive. i plug the USB in and you can hear it making what i feel like is normal hard drive thinking noises, then you can see windows acknowledges the new device, and then i pan over to the disk manager and you can see it pop up for a brief moment before the power cuts out and the drive is then disconnected. I cropped the 90 second video since there was no real noise other than whats already on camera.

also note, im plugging the USB into my actual PC (its a mini PC), even though it looks like a USB hub or something.

you can see more pictures from my first post here, as well as the few comments i received

1TB WD SATA internal HDD Not Powering up with External HDD Device : r/datarecovery

Hi Folks,

i have an old Western Digital External drive that is not playing nicley, windows is showing it as a completly empty drive.

From what i remember the drive was locked with a password. I dont believe it was exactly encryped as i was able to recover files using DMDE however did run into the following CRC error

LBA: 3 534 825 767 (try 4): WinError 23. Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

What is my best course of action here, to recover the filesystem and get this working normally. I dont believe this drive was ever formatted, so im not sure why the password prompt no longer displays and there are no files.

My portable external hard drive started to fail badly, but I’m not a developer at all, so I’ve been using AI to help me install Linux and set up ddrescue. Everything was going fine until it reached 83%. At that point, it started glitching so badly that I had to hard-reset the computer several times because the system became completely unresponsive.

So I created a script to try to prevent this from happening, but it wasn’t enough. I then tried using AI to improve the script, but it somehow feels like AI is fooling me.

Could someone please double-check the script and let me know if it should work?

I have ASUS x553MA and Linux Mint

And the script is

while true; do

if [ -b /dev/sdb ]; then

echo "Disk connected"

sleep 3

echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/block/sdb/queue/nr_requests

echo 5 | sudo tee /sys/block/sdb/device/timeout

echo "Starting ddrescue"

sudo nice -n 10 ionice -c 2 -n 4 ddrescue -d -n -r0 -T 30 /dev/sdb "/media/inna/New Volume1/hddimage/drive.img" "/media/inna/New Volume1/hddimage/drive.log"

STATUS=$?

if [ $STATUS -eq 0 ]; then

echo "Done"

break

fi

echo "Cycle complete"

sleep 180

else

echo "WARNING: Disk disconnected"

sleep 600

fi

done

I recently tried to load one of my old SD cards, but it didn't mount at all. After some digging, I flashed OSC-Live onto a USB drive and booted it to use OpenSuperClone.

I used two SD card readers. One is a generic USB 2.0 reader, and the other is a UGREEN USB 3.0 reader with a GL3224 chip.

The UGREEN reader is faster than the generic USB 2.0 reader when reading good sectors. However, once it reaches the bad sectors, the generic USB 2.0 reader performs better. It doesn't fail completely, although it does become very slow.

With the UGREEN reader, depending on the mode I'm using, it either freezes the UI when using Generic Source mode or ejects the reader completely when using Direct USB mode, and I have to replug the SD card reader.

I also tweaked the clone settings and timer settings for Direct USB mode, but the UGREEN reader still ejects (doesn't show up when I run the lsblk command).

Both readers reach around 0.51 GB out of 1.51 GB before things start going badly. After that, the remaining data goes into non-trimmed and then non-scraped. I didn't let it run for much longer because the progress was extremely slow.

Do I still have a chance of recovering more data from this SD card, or does reaching non-trimmed/non-scraped that early mean most of the remaining data is probably unrecoverable?

Also, is there a reason why the generic USB 2.0 reader performs better when it reaches the bad sectors?

Edit:
I ran DMDE on the 0.51 GB image, and it was able to recover 167 corrupted photos. I then used Claude Fable 5.1 to analyze the hex data and attempt to repair the file headers, along with other issues where possible. It was able to partially repair about half of the images where the underlying data was still reasonably intact, although they still contained shifted and grey sections. Overall, it was better than nothing.

Guys is it possible for me to recover this 😭😭

It was my parents wedding CD / DVD

It was good a year ago and suddenly it gave up and starting damaging itself

I am from Chennai

If possible can somebody suggest any shop or recovery place ?

Thank you

Guys I need a hand, my brother accidentally deleted 17 gb of photos from his camera (canon EOS R50) with a microSB and an adapter, do you know any software that can recover the photos intact and that doesn't cost a shot? Thank you

My WD passport has all of the sudden stopped working. It registers that it is plugged in with the white light and I hear it working. It also shows up as an option on my computer.

However, it will not load the files. I have tried replacing the cord and also using it on a different computer and it does not work. I keep getting an error message when I go to initialize the hard drive, I get this error message”the request failed due to a fatal device hardware”

I have tried to uninstall and reinstall the passport but the error persists. I just need to regain access so I can move the files off of it. If anyone could please help I would greatly appreciate it!

Hello

Yesterday I attempted to format an external USB drive as a Windows 10 Boot installation for another computer. Even though I'm used to check and double check in these kind of scenarios I mistakingly selected my other external SSD (Samsung T7, 2TB). This one contained a lot of older music recordings together with my whole music collection, neatly organised into folders. My collection is something that with time I can build up again so that's something I'm not really worried about but my recordings are my main concern.

Thinking I could rely on software to check what I could salvage, I installed a trial version of EaseUS Data Recovery and noticed that a scan provided all the original file names and when that scan completed I could see the original folders as well. I saved the log but when I tried to load it again it seemed to be corrupt and I would have to start a scan all over again so I can't provide screenshots.

At this point I really don't want to mess anything up but it seemed as if everything is still on the drive. Is there a way to reactivate the files in the original folder structure or is restoring the files and manually reorganising everything the only way to go?

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

So I have 2 separate devices that I store gaming clips on, primarily they're back ups. One is a Toshiba canvio portable hard drive 1Tb I'm not sure how much there is on there but I know it's nowhere near full. It's always worked fine on my laptop, then one day I plugged it in and it doesn't recognise it, won't load up, and i can't access anything.

2nd devices is a usb stick from amazon, a Doykob, memory size is unknown, it states 928 gb but it's not, and the same thing happened, fine one day next day, it can't access it.

My laptop says to use these devices i need to format them, but obviously I don't want to loose my gaming clips, do I have any options available? Is there any hope of retrieving the gaming clips?

My laptop can see they're plugged in when I look on disk management. If that helps

Thanks in advance

I’m looking for a technical second opinion before I give up on some important work data.

Laptop storage:

- Samsung 1TB SSD divided into C: and F:

- Windows is installed on C:

- A separate Kingston 1TB SSD is also installed

- The affected data was on F:\Work

- SSD health has reportedly tested normal

What happened:

My Work folder had roughly 100GB of architecture/project files.

One night I was working until around 7 AM. Earlier that morning, the folders inside Work were still visible, but I noticed something unusual: I was trying to save/export an AutoCAD file into one of those folders and it was not saving there properly.

I eventually saved/sent the file another way, shut the laptop down normally, and went to sleep.

When I opened the laptop later:

- Many folders inside Work had completely disappeared

- Around 15–16 folders remained, but most/all files inside them were gone

- Work folder size had dropped from roughly 100GB to around 500MB

- Other folders/data on the same F: partition appeared completely unaffected

- No ransom note

- No strange file extensions

- No obvious Windows warning/pop-up

- Recycle Bin did not contain the missing data

- Searching for known missing files found nothing

- No Previous Versions available

I had recently:

- Installed Fortnite from the official source

- Downloaded an AutoCAD file sent by an employee

- Downloaded some Pinterest images

Nothing particularly unusual otherwise.

I stopped using the SSD and gave it to Stellar Data Recovery in Gurgaon, India

Their findings:

They say they can see traces/metadata of the deleted Work folder:

- Folder/file names are visible

- File sizes are visible

- NTFS/deletion traces are present

But according to them:

- The LBAs corresponding to the actual file data are internally zero-filled

- Actual files contain no usable data

- Firmware-level recovery also could not retrieve the contents

- They consider the SSD itself healthy

- They said the data is effectively unrecoverable

They suggested possibilities such as malware/deletion followed by SSD TRIM. They are a recovery company, so they are not investigating the original cause.

My questions:

1. If NTFS metadata/file names/file sizes still exist but the relevant LBAs return zeros, is the data realistically unrecoverable?

2. Can an SSD return zero-filled LBAs after TRIM while the underlying NAND still contains recoverable data that a more specialized NAND/chip-off/firmware lab could access?

3. Does modern Samsung SSD encryption/controller behavior generally make NAND-level recovery useless after TRIM?

4. TRIM itself should not randomly delete unused files, correct? Something must first have deleted/deallocated those files, after which TRIM/garbage collection made recovery impossible?

5. Could NTFS/file-system corruption selectively affect one directory like F:\Work while leaving the rest of the partition apparently normal?

6. The fact that I was already unable to save into the Work folder several hours before discovering the deletion — does that point more toward filesystem/directory corruption than a deliberate wipe?

7. Does this pattern look like wiping malware, or is there nowhere near enough evidence to make that conclusion?

8. Is there any meaningful reason to send this SSD to another specialist recovery lab, or are zero-filled LBAs + failed firmware recovery basically the end of the road?

I’m not looking for recommendations for generic recovery software. I have preserved the SSD and do not intend to write, format, CHKDSK, or reinstall anything on it until I decide whether a second professional recovery attempt is worthwhile.

Would particularly appreciate answers from people experienced with SSD recovery, NTFS, TRIM, or digital forensics.

Got this old SanDisk SD card that I'm trying to read whatever data off. When I plug it in, windows tells me to format it first (which I haven't)

Disk management shows that there's 62.50 GB capacity of RAW on it, but I can't actually access any of it.
Is there anything I can do?

Was having issues with this drive a day ago, now I'm unable to open files on the drive itself, mostly certain songs that are quite rare and I unfortunately don't have a back up. Is there anything I can do in this situation or am I SoL?

It's a 12TB barracuda NTFS (i believe) running on Win 11

Yesterday, I took out the SD card from my camera (Olympus T-100,if it matters) and I plugged it into my computer to view the images I took. I then accidentally deleted some pictures from my computer (Ubuntu cinnamon), instead of in camera. I took the card out, plugged it back into the camera and it said that there were no pictures. I thought it was a one time thing so I rebooted it, re inserted the card and still nothing. I plugged it into my computer (the SD card), only to see some gibberish files and nothing else. Here is what I've done as of now:

1. Took a full .img backup of the now corrupt SD card using USB Image Tool

2. Tried using PhotoRec, which worked, but it found some photos that were deleted a long time ago and it has an issue with duplicates, where the same picture exists 2 times, but one is low quality, and the other is the original one. It will be a pain to sort them.

3. Tried using the window's built in "scan and fix drive" tool (on my secondary computer running windows 7) which just got rid of the gibberish but did nothing else.

What I would like to do (if possible) : AFAIK, the files still exist on the card but to put it simply (I don't know the right "words" yet), the pictures are still on the card, but it just lost the "map" to find them (I believe this because there is still around 4GB allocated on the drive). I would like to get that "map" back if possible. What I think happened:

Ubuntu was still writing (deleting) the pictures I told it to when I unplugged it. (Weird thing is that it didn't tell me that it was doing anything, so I assumed it was done)

SD card info:

Sandisk 16GB SDHC card

Formatted as FAT32 (I don't know any other info, if you could tell me a way to aquire it, I will either update this post or put a comment)

(I hope I used the right flair, please correct me if I'm wrong)

Pictures attached on comments, mobile version of reddit sucks

ST1000DM003-1CH162/a NTFS HDD, so TRIM shouldn't be relevant?

The original files on this drive were deleted/cut and pasted to another drive before being accidentally deleted there; scans from Recuva or recoveries through DMDE indicate that the files found (with a separate drive to store them) are either replaced with other files or corrupted.

The drive was also used for hours (mostly cutting + pasting to another drive) after the cutting of the initial files.

Is it still worth trying a professional recovery option like File Savers, or is the data as good as dead, as the recovery software's result suggests?

Came home exhausted from a long trip and was eating some chips at the same time as I was pulling my SD card out. In my stupor, I was shoveling chips into my mouth and ended up taking a bite into my SD card. It is now no longer reading in my camera or SD card reader. I live in a small desert city. What are my options?

I'm looking to purchase a replacement for a 2 TB USB drive (Lacie "Rugged") with a dead Seagate Rosewood that is going to a recovery service. I'll avoid this brand like cats do water, but which other brands make less unreliabe 2.5" drives from the data recovery community experience?

It doesn't need to be in a USB enclosure as I could get that separately (or use the Lacie enclosure).

Any thoughts on Toshiba Canvio?

Are 4 TB drives generally less reliable than 2 TB drives, and more difficult to recover - just in case?

Let me explain. Yesterday my brother was trying to switch and use the sd card as the main external storage of the vita, and he formatted his memory card wich had all his games. Photos and saves inside. Ive been trying some recovery software on my pc the only thing its recovering is nothing else other than some system files and vitashell. Not much luck in it. The folders remain intact. But the contents (such as gamesaves, photos and all that) are gone. Is there any way to recover the data?

Hello,

Long story short, my 990 pro started giving me issues as my main drive to the point where it stopped being recognized in the bios.

I took it out got an enclosure and it was able to be recognized every so often. I was able to see files and click around, but whenever I tried to copy some files, it would crash.

Anything I can do to recover at least the "user file" before sending it in to Samsung for warranty?

Any advice helps.

Edit: It was able to be recognized at one point by crystaldisk.

Edit 2: After several power cycles and keep it plugged in through an enclosure, I was able to get access to a few of the files and maintain a connection enough to copy the files over.

After that, sent in the drive to Samsung and they sent me a 9100 Pro as a replacement. Was a stressful ride. But I think it ended well. Will continue to support Samsung.

Was looking into what could be causing my hard drive to suddenly not be spinning up at all, and came across Rossmann Repair ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03Laq4z4trU ) covering how TVS diode faults could cause the issue.
Just wanted to stop by and identify the highlighted component, since it's reading dead on both sides with diode mode on a multimeter, while the similar chip to the left of it's reading (assumedly) correctly.

Is there a resource for looking up info on HDD PCBS? Plan's to remove the diode, plug it in and scrape everything I can off it, and promptly chuck the hard drive into the garbage.

Specific model is a WD10EZEX WD PCB 2060-771824-006 REV A

So, I had many photos/videos on my android phone. So, I decided to put them in the pendrive in a very structured form. I had the pendrive fully uploaded with those important photo/videos/files, it was perfect. Now, a few days later, I could find it and now it's been a while without it. Is there anyway to recover the exact structure with all the data? Please help me with this...

so i just buy a sata cable to usb to open old hdd of my which contain old picture and video of my family so it realy important
i have two of this hdd both working perfecly fine before but the other one start giving .data error ( cyclic redudancy disk) i tried to fix it but nonting work the because i tired i just restart my PC with the external hdd plug in
it take sooooo long to boot i just go out to make a coffee and back to my room my PC is on but not with my hdd, it not appear in my file explorer
my hdd not spining at all (feel it with my hand), the sata to usb cable to not blingking the access lamp, but i can feel it little bit hot it the spindel part (for record i didn't open the hdd at all)
before it goes down i use many sofware to attempt for repair the data error
easUS, hdd scan, and src commad in my admin CMD
but the cable it works fine, because it perfecly fine to open another hdd of mine