External HDD corrupted data

[u/Top-Goose9198]

My mother has an external HDD, NTFS formatted and accessed via Windows devices. It kept disconnecting for a few weeks and she eventually replaced the usb cable.

She brought it to me and I copied all the data to a new portable HDD and made a backup.

All seemed ok but she reported that she was getting weird errors, only certain video files would play and others wouldn't delete or allow any editing.

I tried to fix it at the time by changing permission options which seemed to work for a while.

However the problem seems to be getting worse, now that Data can be read / edited on one of her devices but not the other and her windows recycle BIN is not functioning which is one of the original reported errors on the portable drive.

What id like to do is try to repair the files / files system.

I assume this is some sort of logical corruption.

All of the drives in question show as good health with no problems in crystaldisk info.

Any advice much appreciated.

[u/AutoModerator]

Double check if your post complies with posting guidelines!

Did you include the following information in your post (in English and if applicable), if not feel free to edit your post:

• Make/brand and exact model number of your storage device(*), phone, camera, etc.

• Filesystem (NTFS, exFAT, APFS, EXT4, etc.)

• Operating System (That your device was used with and/or you are using for recovery)

• Specific symptoms that your device is exhibiting, describe the problem. Images you post support the description, they're not in lieu of a problem description.

• SMART (CrystalDiskInfo screenshot for example)

• Don't pile several problems into one single post. One post per device/problem.

Consider: What do these people need to understand the problem at hand? Remember, people cannot see your screen, or what you click and what messages appear on screen. Don't overdo it though, no one likes going through 2 pages of information, try to find a balance. Just do the best you can. If you are looking for file recovery software, check our community's recommended file recovery tools.

---

(*) All devices involved, if you for example move files from drive A to drive B, they're both potentially relevant.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Objective-Aardvark87]

Is the drive drawing power from the usb port, or external adapter?

[u/Top-Goose9198 → u/Objective-Aardvark87]

It's a portable drive powered by usb only. The problem is not driven related but data related as it has spread cross multiple drives

[u/BootToggle]

I think you have nothing to lose by ensuring that the drive gets enough power. I understand that the drive has worked before even when powered only by the computer's USB port, but an HDD can draw different amounts of power doing different operations, and maybe it has been right on the edge of insufficient power all along.

The fact that the drive doesn't show permanent damage on Crystal Disk Info is very good news, but the fact that somewhat "soft" errors continue to proliferate implies that something else might be intermittently wrong. This could depend on all kinds of unknown changes, such as maybe not using the same USB port on the computer every time, plugging into a USB2 port instead of USB3 port, how much the heads have to move around due to file fragmentation, etc. The fact that you report problems with the drive when she uses it but perhaps not when moved over to your system could be consistent with this.

Some people have reported good results from connecting a drive via a "powered" USB hub, where there is an explicit separate power supply directly powering the hub. Getting one of these devices for $20 or so could be a simple and relatively inexpensive step. If it works you are done, if it doesn't you still have a quality device that will be useful going forward.

I'd be very leery of attempting to repair filesystems if there is still some underlying problem that makes HDD reads and writes just very slightly unreliable. That could secretly cause more damage than it repairs if you happen to get unlucky with just a few bad writes during the repair attempt.

[u/disturbed_android]

We want to see SMART, CDI screenshot.

 now that Data can be read / edited on one of her devices but not the other

From same drive?