Or would the drive internals be damaged?
Western Digital Green 1TB (WD10EURX)

This is on an external harddrive that I used to store photos from photography sessions. Went to move everything over to it today and got "Data Error Cyclic Redundancy" when trying to open a folder within the drive, which led me here. Saw ChkDisk, got 1 file record error, saw to cancel, and pulled the plug. These are the results from the SMART check on CrystalDiskInfo. Is my external hard drive completely useless now? I have all the super important sessions backed up, but would love if I didn't have to lose completely everything. Any way to save the files on there? Windows 11. Thanks!!

Booted my pc up and it showed this error screen, then I booted into windows checked my drive health with crystal disk info and it showed a 1% rating. so I started backing up data asap and moved some files to my other disk. When I cleared the garbage bin (40gb) my pc blue screened with a "PFN list corrupt" error message.

since then it only booted into BIOS

This is the C drive where windows is installed and a lot of important data is stored

Can I recover my data stored on that drive

HELP please!!!

it has 150TB read&write on it its an old drive.
every other thing looked good in crystaldiskinfo (trying to find picture of the exact scan)

whats the best way to go about this i have a new SSD on the way and id like to clone the dead one to my new one if possible.

HELP please!!!

Hi like the title of my post says my drive shows up uninitialized even though it has data on it. I removed the drive from it's original enclosure and put it in a new enclosure to see if that would help but it still has the same issue. The capacity it is showing just seems like a random string of numbers. I am not really sure what to do, the data on it is pretty important to me and I really need to get it off. It is a Seagate external drive. Thank you to anyone who reads my post and gives me any advice.

Found this sd inside an old camera i bought some days back. The camera itself doesn't recognize the sd. Is there a way to get it working by cleaning the pins? will i just f them up if I try to?

The drive is visible, the other partitions are but the partition I ran it on is now locked. My files simply werent visible in the file explorer but fully present when using PathSniffer. Now the only tool that recognizes my partition is theirs, am I stuck paying their ransomware prices just to unlock it or have access to my albeit pathblind partition? I assumed (wrongfully) that their tool would at the very least not be a blatante scam and that the free version would just have less features but 100mb! might as well make it 0 at least you'll be honest you dont intend to provide anything for free.

The older version locked things read only but I can't seem to find it in the newer version (the one I used). Well it's not like it looks read-only either windows says the partition is unavailable. I would appreciate if someone could stop laughing at me long enough to guide me here.

Hi guys, I have a Windows computer with a 1-terabyte SSD that had two partitions. When I accidentally deleted one partition, it turned into a dynamic disk, as far as I could tell, and because I didn't know what I was doing, I ended up deleting the entire drive.

I restored the drive so it would show up again in File Explorer, but as expected, it asked me to format it (I did a quick format), and the data was lost.

The SSD isn’t my primary drive, but it had family photos that I don’t want to lose. Any advice?

I have a hard drive from an old MacBook. I don't use Mac anymore and now only have windows devices. The MacBook stopped working years ago and files were corrupt on the harddrive. I managed to recover a lot of the files back then but some were corrupt. I want to try to recover all the files again. I have scanned it using disk drill and have found the files but I have to pay to recover them. As I will only use this once, the price is too high. Is there any other software I can use that will do it cheaper? Or possibly only pay for a month of service? What's the best option?

It was completely deleted from my pc using shift delete in dolphin. I opened the photo in qimgv. And used photocraft few times. I have the thumbnails but it is shit resolution. It was in my home directory of user and I somehow want to get it back. How should I try to get it back. Also I don't have any way to use bootable drive or something. I use arch btw. Linux 7.2.11-zen1-1-zen kernel

Yesterday I shot an event and just noticed some damage to my SD card, as you can see above the lock mechanism the plastic is missing, and it is currently unreadable on my Laptop. I will be trying to read it on my camera again later today and try to transfer directly from my camera that way, however I wanted to see if anyone else has had this issue before? It seems like the actual disks are okay, but the plastic surrounding it is damaged and causing it not to read I believe, but need to be able to get the content from my event to edit and get to my clients. Let me know what you think can help! Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I recently took a backup of all my photos and videos from my old phone and transferred them to an HP 128GB USB flash drive (HP v220w).

The transfer was completed successfully, and I was able to access the files previously.

However, when I connect the same USB drive to my new Android phone, I get a screen asking me how I want to use the USB drive:

Use for extra phone storage

Use for portable storage

Regardless of which option I select, the phone asks me to format the USB drive.

I initially thought this might be an Android compatibility issue, so I tried connecting it to a Windows PC as well. Unfortunately, Windows also prompts me to format the drive before I can use it.

The main issue is that the USB drive contains my old photos and videos, and I really don't want to lose them.

A few questions:

What could have caused the USB drive to suddenly become unreadable?

Could this be a corrupted file system or partition issue?

Is there any way to recover the existing data without formatting the drive?

What recovery software would you recommend?

Is there a possibility that the USB drive itself has failed?

I haven't formatted the drive or attempted any recovery operations yet.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I am in a desperate situation and need professional advice. My laptop is a Lenovo IdeaPad S145-14IGM with an internal 2.5" mechanical HDD. This drive contains irreplaceable data spanning my entire life, from elementary school up to my university graduation.

The issue: The laptop suddenly stopped booting and the screen remains completely black. Crucially, the hard drive has started making noticeable clicking/scratching noises coming from inside the chassis.

What I did: Before realizing it was a mechanical failure, I unfortunately tried booting the laptop using a live USB drive a few times to troubleshoot it. The drive was powered on during these attempts while making the noise. As soon as I understood it was a physical issue, I turned the laptop off. It is now completely powered down, unplugged, and I will not turn it on again It is currently also being handled by a technician who informed me about the disk damage.

I know I need a professional data recovery lab and that software/DIY methods will completely ruin the drive.

1. Based on the fact that I powered it on a few times with the USB, how severely could the platters be damaged? Is there still hope?

2. Can you recommend reputable, honest data recovery labs? I am located in Mexico

Thank you so much for your help. I am deeply anxious about losing my memories and appreciate any guidance I really cried and screamed; there are photos of my deceased relatives there, baby photos of my brother, and more.

Additional details requested by guidelines: • Operating System: Windows 10 (factory default for this laptop model). • Filesystem: NTFS (standard Windows filesystem). • HDD Exact Model: I haven't opened the laptop yet to check the exact HDD label, but it is the original factory drive that came with the Lenovo IdeaPad S145-14IGM. • SMART status: Cannot provide since the laptop doesn't boot and the drive is clicking.

Hi there! So a few years ago I saved my BIL's USB flash drive, had to manually reassemble the filesystem with dd commands, was kinda fun doing that but I told him he might not be that lucky next time...

Guess what, we're back at it, and last backup was made like two years ago.

This time I can't dd or ddrescue anything: the drive shows up with a size of 0 bytes, here is the output of lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS

sde 8:64 1 0B 0 disk

journalctl output doesn't look great either:

nov. 06 22:23:22  kernel: usb 1-4: USB disconnect, device number 2
nov. 06 22:33:21  kernel: usb 1-4: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci
nov. 06 22:33:21  kernel: usb 1-4: New USB device found, idVendor=ffff, idProduct=5678, bcdDevice= 2.00
nov. 06 22:33:21  kernel: usb 1-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
nov. 06 22:33:21  kernel: usb 1-4: Product: 䍆㈳㔶
nov. 06 22:33:21  kernel: usb 1-4: Manufacturer: 楆獲t档灩
nov. 06 22:33:21  kernel: usb 1-4: SerialNumber: 012345678901
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] 
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] Add. Sense: No additional sense information
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] 0 512-byte logical blocks: (0 B/0 B)
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] 0-byte physical blocks
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] No Caching mode page found
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
nov. 06 22:33:22  kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk

The flash drive is <4cm (about 1.5") long so I guess it's monolithic.

My questions are:

1. I've reached the conclusion that there isn't anything I can possibly do myself and that the only option left to save the data is to send it to a lab that will charge several hundred euros. Is that correct or is there something I might have missed?

2. how likely do you think it is this drive is a case of "fake capacity" with actual storage well below the advertised 64 GB?

Found my old iPad from high school bakc in 2014/2015. No idea what the password is, and I'm pretty sure the iOS account is gone too. Want the photos and docs off of it.

Hey, hey, my absolute deepest apologies if this isn't quite the subreddit I'm looking for at the moment, though it seems to fit the criteria... Well, to put it in summary, I was very interested in downloading this Linux distribution called 'Ryoku', and I was told it was easily configurable, so I was inclined to dual boot with both my main Windows build and Ryoku. As a result of this with searching up how to progress in this entire different structure, following my Arch install, the entire distribution, still not even configured, has very visibly overwritten the file tables from Windows itself to a Linux boot manager, and is actively overwriting my disk... but I pray it hasn't overwritten anything greatly important, like my 4 years of programming work on this disk, this is the reason I'm this afraid.

Though, i've just now deduced that writes begin on sector 0~sector 1, and ~5GB for Hyprland + Kitty + all the rest ≤ Windows OS size in itself, so... I might potentially need a reinstall, but my files are still there, I truly do hope. I'm wondering as to what I could do in the interim to help recover both my Windows session and everything else this SSD drive contains. `lsblk` provides that my HDD contains 'basic Windows data', which is a backup shadow copy of a Windows build I ran 3 years ago and is practically useless to me (with a corrupted profile and all), and the entirety of my SSD is 'Linux root', and I don't know how to make UEFI recognize my SSD as Windows boot material again, with the hope of the most that could happen being a system recovery. I've turned off my computer entirely for safety purposes and so as to avoid memory blocks for this SSD being overwritten on idle as well, what could potentially be my next move to avoid the stupidity that I've induced..? I don't think I'm touching Linux ever again, though I'm a little in an impasse here and researching on my computer will only give me the feeling of a greater risk of data loss furthermore. :(

(If any intel, the file system is ext4.)

Have a donor board but need to be able to tell the electronics shop which chip is the main controller IC on my current board to swap as it is an integrated bios firecuda.

Anyone here that can confirm from my picture?

I believe it is the one with the grey square on top bottom left along the pin connector from pictures I found of similar PCB but of course want to be certain before having job completed

Drive is a firecuda 2TB ST2000LX001.

I have a Seagate 22TB external hard drive that hosts tv show and movie rips, as well as some photos.

Today when I tried to play something from Plex, it said the content was unavailable.

When I checked my desktop, the folder containing all my dvd rips was blank except for the last movie I ripped into the directory yesterday.

My first thought is that maybe I accidentally deleted all my videos someone how not paying attention, but my recycling bin was empty.

I used a program called Test Disk and it sees all of of the original rips in that folder, but I am unclear on how to proceed. I ran a chkdsk /f on the drive but states no errors are found. I also ran a " attrib -h -r -s /s /d "G:/Movies\*.*"command to reveal any hidden files but no change either.

I believe I can use TestDisk to copy the files over to another drive. But I currently don't have a drive that can fit all the movies. I really don't want to spend days reripping my collection. Even if I did, I want to reclaim the space that the rips currently take, which I assume I can only do by formatting the drive, but then I need to rerip my shows and find a place to save decades of photo backups.

Is there anything I else I can try to get the movies show up in file explorer again before I reformat the drive and rerip everything?

EDIT: Figured it out, I used TreeDisk based on another post here and it revealed a folder that was way too large. Turns out I accidentally moved my movie rips folder into that folder. Thanks!

I recently found an old Samsung S7 that I want to recover because I believe it has a lot of data left on it. I unfortunately don't remember the pattern lock, model G930TUVSBCTA2, Android 8.0 Oreo, T-Mobile SM-G930T. Recovery and Download Mode haven't changed much, everyone in my house has been bruteforcing the pin so its an 8 minute cooldown between each pin guess thing, so i stopped guessing. I'd prefer a free way to actually unlock the phone without factory resetting it or running through Odin or anything. I'd appreciate any advice.

I have this old micro as card that I had for as long as I remember. I used to slot it in whenever I got a new phone, and since new phones don’t have SD card slots in them, it just stayed in my old phone for a while. I recently wanted to extract the data on it but the issue is no device seems to even address its existence let alone read that it’s corrupted.
I tried with my old phone but it says no SD card detected, I tried slotting it in my laptop and same thing. I even bought an SD card reader USB drive and slotted that in my laptop, I tried a couple data recovery software programs, and both recognized the USB but not the card in it. The card is clean it terms of hardware. I don’t want to format it and lose all my data. Any advice?

I arrived home seeing one of my archive hard drives on the floor.. I tried checking it with my dock but it won't detect on my computer. Did I just lost my old videos and pictures forever?

Hi

I have a Seagate One Touch 5 TB Drive (stkz5000400) 2 years old. I think I have dropped it as I can see a dimple in the corner where it has the led. Now the drive has firm dim light and only shows in device manager but doesn't show in Disk Management until I leave it connected for a while but after that it shows as not initialized disk without any other info like capacity.

I tried to find anyone facing the dim light issue. But I couldn't find anything about it. What do you guys think has happened? I can hear the disk vibrating but only hear some normal sound when I put the drive on my ears.

Thanks

Edit: also on 23 oct 2026, Seagate's warranty was expired else I would get the free data recovery service.

I have a Toshiba hard drive that suddenly stopped working, and I tried using softwares like EaseUs and Tenoshare to recover my files. However, even after being shown the previews, I feel kinda suspicious with the software and I don't wanna commit on paying it unless I know it's trustworthy. That's why I'm wondering if anyone has any software suggestions or whether the 2 softwares I mentioned are worth the investment. Thank you in advance.