Windows 10: 500GB Backup Drive working to damaged in a day

OK, hoping someone might be able to help here, or just tell me to give it up, but I'm in a panic here.

So I have a 500GB Samsung Spin point drive (2.5") in a USB3.0 caddy that I have used regularly as a quick temporary backup for when I do PC repairs for friends & family. This instance however I agreed to help a work colleague, so I go through my regular backup procedure (with Macrium Reflect) and it makes the usual file, approx. 70GB this time (50GB Main & 20GB Restore Partitions).

After doing a full reinstall & update of the laptop, the next day I go to access the image to move data back to user folders, and then the problems start, I access the image OK in explore mode, but I cannot copy any data off. I attempt to copy the backup file to another drive, but the transfer crawls to a stop within a few seconds. Restoring the image to another drive also fails.

So I assume problems with the drive in question, starting to sweat a little….
I try a chkdsk, which after running for almost 12 hours, stuck at stage 4, tells me it has problems with the disk… and now I get to using HDDScan to see what’s wrong, after letting it verify for ~5 hours, I check on the progress, it’s at 30%, and nightmare! About 10,000 and rising bad block count!

How on earth it got so many bad blocks all in the one area is anyone’s guess…

But the serious question here: Have I just lost over 25GB of my Work colleague’s data? Or can I, in some way, salvage this?

(He works as a DJ with this Laptop, so he has a lot of custom music & mixes & literally millions of photos….)

Using the drive dosent seem to be damaging it further, it just seems to be where the backup image is stored is all bad blocks!?

:)

 

Cloning a 500GB disk drive to a new drive

You would really need a drive imaging software to do this. While Windows would surely let you just drag-and-drop files from one drive to another, that's not the type of drive image backup you need for your goal.

 

Cloning a 500GB disk drive to a new drive

You can use the
free Macrium Reflect to clone the drive and/or create a system image.

 

I once had a 750GB drive installed in an external enclosure. I dropped it about a half meter while it was spun up. It never worked again.

There are data recovery services that can do everything through dismantling the drive in a clean room. I don't know what it costs, but to paraphrase Yogi Berra, it's so expensive that nobody does it.

 

I know damage happens if its dropped etc, but thats the weird thing, the enclosure was never moved, I just plug in the cable in when I need it.
After letting the HDDScan run for a while, it eventually came back with approx 70GB of bad blocks.... the same size as the image, how on earth does that work?
Im assuming somehow as the image was writing it was damaging the drive? but then how did it pass the image verification?

 

Similar problem using 2TB seagate HD in an enclosure, ran Macrium reflect clone with no problems but trying recently I receive write errors, running chkdsk r it hangs at 1% for over 12 hours, running just the check it says there's no errors. I can't even create an image. It's either a bad drive or the enclosure.

 

Hard drives (old or new) can fail at any time, often without warning or apparent cause. I had one drive that was working fine one day, the next morning it wasn't even recognized by the BIOS. As I had a backup of everything important I did not investigate further.

 

FYI click of death started, drive no longer talking to PC, USB or SATA. figured as it was running hot for a long time in an external case during backups, the preamp might be cooked, read that was one of the causes of CoD.
Bit the bullet and told colleague, said it wasnt all THAT important, still had photos on camera, and music is all re-downloadable. panic over, drive binned (out of warranty) oddly tho, this is the 2nd 2.5" 500GB Samsung Spinpoint that has CoD'd on me.... people might wanna start checking if they have them.

 

Samsung HDD, 'nuf said. Seen more dead Samsung drives (last few years) than all other combined. Hitachi seems to be best at this time.