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In the first place I have sent my external HDD to the data-recovery specialist. Unfortunately the recovery cost was estimated to be equal to the value of a new high performance computer.

Paying this much is beyond my reach, therefor I have to ask; is there anyone willing to guide me through the process of data recovery?

Spec:

OS: Debian 9 -rc 3 / Windows 8.1 home
HDD: WD My Passport ultra 2.0 TB 3.0 USB
HDD file-system: NTFS

Specialist's diagnosis:

  1. Damaged disk service area.
  2. Damaged disk surface.
  3. Due to the surface damage, disk enters emergency mode.
  4. Damaged disk head is suspected but not confirmed.

Suggested course of action:

  1. In order to access the disk's firmware, one should solder into disk's electronics.
  2. Then disk's service area should be repaired.
  3. Then get the disk out of the emergency mode.
  4. Then make sector copy of the disk.
  5. Then check the consistency and correctness of the record.

How did it happen:

While in the process of copying some data, to the external HDD, my OS froze. When the OS came back to normal I was unable to write or read any data from the disk, any attempt would result in an I/O Error. After I rebooted the OS I was unable to mount the drive.

I can't understand how this simple event, could cause so tremendous damage...
Any explanation will be appreciated! (I have to understand what went wrong)

My doubts:

After my disk was diagnosed, I consulted the results with competitive data-recovery specialists (simple chat via a phone). And most of them told me that this diagnosis is not accurate... Because out of 5 possible things that could break in any hard drive, my hard drive have been diagnosed with 4 of them and that is a bit suspicious...

  1. I don't believe that disk head is damaged.
  2. I believe that there is a way to repair disk's service area with out welding into disk's electronics.
  3. I believe it is possible to boot the disk into normal mode without interfering with the hardware.

For the sake of my data, i have to assume that the diagnosis was correct...

Additional info:

My disk can not be mounted. It does not appear under /dev/sd*/, but it can be found with lsusb

Disk is clicking once per 2 or 3 minutes... I find it strange. I was unable to find out the meaning of this behavior. I think its related to the driver initialization failure.

Very important update:

I plugged in this external HDD and to my surprise it mounted. I was also able to see file system, and copy single most important project. After that disk failed again... I pushed my luck a bit, but now i know for sure that disk surface is OK (there was no I/O Errors) and the head is OK (or at least it was OK).

For now I put the HDD on the shelf. But since my data are not corrupted, what should be the next step? What should I do to get all of my data back?

Update #2:

Now I am facing an inaccessible HDD error. Disk is being mounted under /media/<user>/ upon plugging in. It takes a while to mount.

When I try to open the HDD at the GUI level I am getting Unable to access My Passport: an operation is already pending error.

When I try to access it via console i get:

patryk@debian-pc:~$ cd /media/patryk/My\ Passport/
cd: permission denied

patryk@debian-pc:~$ ls -la /media/patryk/My\ Passport/
ls -la: permission denied

patryk@debian-pc:~$ sudo ls -la /media/patryk/My\ Passport/
drwxrwxrwx  1 patryk patryk    4096 May 20 16:18 .
drwxr-x---+ 3 root   root      4096 May 27 00:30 ..

But this HDD is periodically coming back to life !!! Once every ~10 hours it will mount without any problem. I will be able to copy a single (text-like) file and then it fails again.

Right now I do not understand what could be the cause of this behavior, therefore i am trying to learn as much as I can.

Also I have found my old HDD and to my surprise it is still working (it reports I/O Errors from time to time). I am testing suggested methods on this HDD in order make myself familiar with them, and in order to reduce the chance of my error.

I will keep this Question updated with every piece of news. In mean while i could use an advice;

  • what do you think is the cause of this behavior? (Disk is coming back to life once every 10 or so hours?)
  • Is is a good idea to run ddrescue(or others recommended programs) on this disk, while it is in the state of inaccessibility? I am asking this Because i am sure that the disk will become inaccessible right after i will start the data recovery process.
PatrykB
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2 Answers2

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The process of data recovery - particularly if you are a Linux user and familiar with the command line is quite simple and well established (and repeated many times here !)

Note: Do not do anything else to try and recover your data (short of giving it to an expert) until you have done the first 3 steps below.

  1. Download and installl Photorec, and (Gnu) DDRescue.
  2. Obtain and install another disk at least as large as your existing failed disk - or find space on an existing drive.
  3. Use DDRescue to make a bit copy of the drive. This may take several attempts, and you might want to try parsing from the front of the disk, then backwards - You can run this program as many times as required. The process will take a long time - generally, on a disk which is failing, the longer you wait (think days) the more you will recover.

Ideally make a copy of the DDRescue copy of the disk, and attempt to rescue/repair off that. If thats not an option, some tools will allow you to recover data off the disk to a new location. Repairing the copied raw disk is not recommended as it could corrupt the data further.

Running Photorec will often allow for the recovery of smaller files regardless of the disk format.

If you can mount the disk copy read-only and pull data off that, thats probably the best way to go.

If you can copy the copy, you can attempt to do disk repairs (checkdisks etc) on that. If it fails you can always clone the copy again.

davidgo
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Updated information from comments:

Since the device is clicking, I would state that the device is bad. There are guides out there to help with the 'hard drive clicking'.

I would recommend only two.

  1. Use a live cd, and copy the data to another USB. I've had reasonable luck with using it, even on a clicking hard drive. Used partition magic

Did a huge 2TB this way that was full of photos and videos. Was able to save about 90% of the data. Partition Magic didn't seem to care that it stopped and re-mounted the drive after a click on the copy.

  1. Replace the circuit on the hard drive

Otherwise you will need to pay for professional repair.

Good luck.

WD passports are tough little buggers, so I find it hard to believe that a simple issue like this would cause hardware based issues.

Then again anything can happen when it comes to electronics.

Taking a look at this:

http://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=15156

They do have some repair tools to try and resolve the issue. Seem to require a windows computer however.

JustAGrump
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