Recovering Media Files from a Hard Drive

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JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#133865 5-Nov-2013 21:41

I have been merrily ripping my DVD and music collections so that they can be shared across my network etc. I ripped a bunch of stuff to a WD external hard drive, about 1.4TB in files all told, which then went on a shelf for a few months. Understanding the importance of backups, I purchased a second drive to duplicate its contents.

The trouble is, it won't mount.

So far I have:
1. tried another external drive on the same system - worked fine
2. tried the failed drive on another computer - didn't work
3. removed it from its housing, and attached an external SATA->USB converter and power, didn't work
4. put it in an alternative USB external drive housing, didn't work.

It appears to be spinning fine. It's just that it won't mount and be read.

While it's not irretrievable in the sense that I have the original disks and can re-rip and re-encode everything, doing this for 5-600 DVDs and circa 1,000 CDs, and well as re-capturing 40-50 VHS recordings that I don't have disks for, will be a major pain in the rear end.

The drive itself is a WD 2TB Green, WD20EADS if it helps. I brought it some time ago, no longer have the reciept and the the shop I brought it from has closed, so no prospect of returning it.

Anyone have any advice about any other techniques I might be able to try to get the data off the drive? Not woried about saving the drive, but would like to get the data off iff possible.

All reasonable suggestions gratefully received.

nitrotech

1285 posts

Uber Geek

#927895 5-Nov-2013 21:49

Does it show up as a drive in computer management? If it shows up, even as raw, then there is a chance of recovering data otherwise the pro's charge between $500 and 1k to recover the drive, so if the data is worth that much to you then it may be the way to go.

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#927943 6-Nov-2013 00:05

It shows up as a drive on my Win7 box (inaccessible and right-click properties doesn't work). It doesn't show up at all on the older Vista box, which is what was used to write the data to it in the first place.

PhillyG

42 posts

Geek

#927992 6-Nov-2013 08:56

I had the same issue with the same model drive.
I did manage to get quite a lot off the drives but found quite a lot of my media had errors during playback, so had to re-rip my DVD collection again - not fun!

I RMA'd my drive to western digital and they sent me a brand new drive to replace it. From what I understand they had a lot of issues with this model drive.

macuser

2120 posts

Uber Geek

#927994 6-Nov-2013 08:59

Try Testdisk, a simple cmd line style tool, saved my life numerous times when the partition table gets erased, also use 'Disk Management' in Windows to see if the partitions are there, if they are, right click and assign a drive letter, there is a chance it might pop up.

nitrotech

1285 posts

Uber Geek

#927996 6-Nov-2013 09:00

JimmyH: It shows up as a drive on my Win7 box (inaccessible and right-click properties doesn't work). It doesn't show up at all on the older Vista box, which is what was used to write the data to it in the first place.

Try this http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

There is no GUI it's all text based

surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#928041 6-Nov-2013 10:43

JimmyH:
Anyone have any advice about any other techniques I might be able to try to get the data off the drive? Not woried about saving the drive, but would like to get the data off iff possible.

All reasonable suggestions gratefully received.

I reckon , remove the drive from the casing and try to connect it to a sata port. Then, if it is not showing up in bios at all you have little hope outside of data recovery company.

'If' it shows up in bios, use a data recovery program like 'getdataback' or something similar. But, you'll be lucky to get much back if there are sector issues.

Over the years I've learned that as soon as you get a single bad sector error in the event viewer log this means the drive is stuffed and you should immediately begin copying the data you need. The drive will only get worse over time. Reformatting might prolong death but not for long. I had a disagreement with pbtech about this once, and, turns out, i was right!!

And, the other lesson .... I always buy hard drives in pairs and use beyondcompare or crashplan to mirror them -- with a frequency according to the importance of the data.