Portable Hard Drive With Bad Sectors

[n8tive97]

Does anyone know how to fix this? Its a WD Passport My Book Essential. It has all my twins birth pictures, family pics, business files and a bunch of movies on it. The birth pics of my twins and pics of my kids growing up is what I'm after. I am willing to pay someone who knows how to fix the bad sectors and salvage the data.

Please let me know!

n8tive97

7two0-9four0- zerozero8zero

[TFOGGER]

You may be able to recover it with something like Recuva.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

[ray1970]

I learned years ago that no hardware device can be trusted. I back up important stuff to multiple devices.

Might try that Recuva. I used it once to recover some files I had lost on an old laptop.

[Circuits]

You generally can't "repair" bad sectors that have physically failed - just mark them as bad in the allocation table and read/write around the failed sectors. The data in said failed sectors is only recoverable to the ability of the file format to withstand corruption and damage - not a huge, hairy deal with video files that already expect lossy compression, but bad for things like photo files that lack redundancy. Think of it as damage to the print or film stock on which it was recorded in that the damaged areas will be damaged for good, and you can only attempt to smooth or filter around them.

If you cannot read the disc now, then a data recovery program or service may be able to recover data for you from the undamaged areas, but if it's beyond a recovery program, that service gets very pricey, very quickly. To the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars to attempt, and no guarantees.

[iego]

If you do have to use a professional service, these guys have been around for a while and would likely be trustworthy, if not inexpensive.

https://datatechlab.com/

Microcenter says they also offer recovery services, and would likely be much less expensive, but I wonder how good they are?
http://www.microcenter.com/site/content/instore-service-hdd-data-recovery.aspx

If you do it yourself, or find someone to help you, you should probably start by making a copy of the drive, and then work to recover your files from the copy, preserving the original.

A device like this allows you to get at the bare metal drive and duplicate it to a new drive...
http://www.microcenter.com/product/467910/NexStar_TX_Dual_Bay_25-35_SATA_to_USB_30_Hard_Drive_Dock

Or you can use imaging software to make a copy of the drive on another hard drive which you can then mount and attempt to work with or write to a new hard drive.

Acronis True Image is one of the best imaging programs out there.
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

They will have knowledge databases and forums that will be available to help you with advice and tips, tricks and traps.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/1871

They also have a recovery utility similar to the recuva listed above that will attempt to recover files if possible.
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/how-to-recover-files/

An advantage of getting Acronis True Image now is that you will also be able to use it to backup in the future, etc.

-John

[Mazin]

Pop the HD into a Linux machine, bet you'll be able view and to copy the data.

[n8tive97]

You may be able to recover it with something like Recuva.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

Thank you, Mazin may have a solution. If not I will try this. appreciate it!

[n8tive97]

Pop the HD into a Linux machine, bet you'll be able view and to copy the data.

Thanks Brotha!

[n8tive97]

If you do have to use a professional service, these guys have been around for a while and would likely be trustworthy, if not inexpensive.

https://datatechlab.com/

Microcenter says they also offer recovery services, and would likely be much less expensive, but I wonder how good they are?
http://www.microcenter.com/site/content/instore-service-hdd-data-recovery.aspx

If you do it yourself, or find someone to help you, you should probably start by making a copy of the drive, and then work to recover your files from the copy, preserving the original.

A device like this allows you to get at the bare metal drive and duplicate it to a new drive...
http://www.microcenter.com/product/467910/NexStar_TX_Dual_Bay_25-35_SATA_to_USB_30_Hard_Drive_Dock

Or you can use imaging software to make a copy of the drive on another hard drive which you can then mount and attempt to work with or write to a new hard drive.

Acronis True Image is one of the best imaging programs out there.
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

They will have knowledge databases and forums that will be available to help you with advice and tips, tricks and traps.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/1871

They also have a recovery utility similar to the recuva listed above that will attempt to recover files if possible.
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/how-to-recover-files/

An advantage of getting Acronis True Image now is that you will also be able to use it to backup in the future, etc.

-John

Thanks for the info John!

[n8tive97]

You generally can't "repair" bad sectors that have physically failed - just mark them as bad in the allocation table and read/write around the failed sectors. The data in said failed sectors is only recoverable to the ability of the file format to withstand corruption and damage - not a huge, hairy deal with video files that already expect lossy compression, but bad for things like photo files that lack redundancy. Think of it as damage to the print or film stock on which it was recorded in that the damaged areas will be damaged for good, and you can only attempt to smooth or filter around them.

If you cannot read the disc now, then a data recovery program or service may be able to recover data for you from the undamaged areas, but if it's beyond a recovery program, that service gets very pricey, very quickly. To the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars to attempt, and no guarantees.

Well crap, I hope it doesn't come to that! I would be willing to pay though, can't get these pics back.

[Madeinhb]

I learned years ago that no hardware device can be trusted. I back up important stuff to multiple devices.

Might try that Recuva. I used it once to recover some files I had lost on an old laptop.

Yup. I have copies on a raid HD, USB flash drive and I burn CD'S.

[TheGrey]

I have used Datatech in the past; they're really good.
Microcenter just farms it out to Datatech, because they're next door.

[hatidua]

No help this time, but in the future, keep everything in at least three places. One on your desk, one in the safe, one in the bank, and just update everything weekly.

Also, those RAID-1 arrays won't protect you from all 2/4/X going down at the same time - been there, done that. They can all be corrupted simultaneously.

I'm not a techy, and many here are, but redundancy has saved my backside on more than one occasion.

One on the desk, one in the safe, one in the bank (sorry, no three at the same place at any one time) -

73089

[Delfuego]

I wouldn't mess with it yourself! If you really need these photos send it out for recovery. you cna damage the disk further attempting a recovery operation. I have used Data Tech Labs before and they got our data back.

There is an old auto repair adage regarding what it cost, and how much more it cost if you worked on it yourself before you brought it in...

[thedave1164]

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