Windows 10: External USB drive not properly ejected - now RAW fformat

I'm doing fabbo with Win10 /s

Because of some annoyances - hopefully fixed in the RTM Version - my USB drives cannot be ejected safely from their controller in Win10. So I eject them with the hardware release mechanism from the external enclosure. Windows usually doesnt like that but apart from resetting (I think) that USB connection, nothing happens.

That is until today. After putting a 2TB disk back in the enclosure, Win10 insisted it needed to format the disk. Chkdsk insists that the NTFS boot sector is damaged and the backup one is no use either. The FS shows as RAW.

With tools like EaseUS Data Recovery I can actually see all files, the complete folder structure and the file properties (such as sizes) but when I extract them, they're corrupted. They look fine but they're unplayable (all Video files).
I read somewhere that those tools basically just find the beginning of the file in the allocation table and then use the size to extract the file in a continuous block. If the disk was fragmented however, that approach results in useless files.

I'm running a deep scan with Testdisk to find all partitions and get the RAW files, but it takes forever.

What I wanted to know is, can it really be, that something minuscule like detaching a drive unsafely (while there is no apparent drive activity and all my tasks have finished) gets Windows to f#°@ up the boot sectors and MFT so badly that the drive is basically useless? Isnt there a quick fix, like restoring the boot sector and MFT (chkdsk wont do it)?

Cant believe we havent come further in data and drive protection.

:)

 

I cannot open a cd or dvd disc with Windows 10. The message states: Drag files to this folder to add them to the disc.

Further reply - I think I may not have properly ejected the CD from the external hard drive and caused the files to become RAW. Could this be the cause of the problem? As I was removing CDs and putting in other CDs.

 

External USB drive on Windows 10

I am using an external USB Superdrive with Windows 10 on a virtual machine (Fusion) installed on an iMac computer. Windows recognizes the external drive as F:, device manager shows the drive as working properly, however it will not accept a disk. If I
insert a disk part way, it won't go in, but if I click on "eject", the disk is ejected. Strangely, when I installed Windows 10, it was from a disk and the external drive accepted that disk for the installation. The external drive does work when connected to
the Mac.

 

You can't "restore" the MFT. The MFT is a map of all files on your system, and if the backup is bad then there's nothing that can be done. In addition, small files can be stored entirely in the MFT, so if that is corrupt, so too are those files.

The reason that ejecting disks can corrupt them is because Windows uses write-through caching by default, thus when you save files to disk, the OS may not actually write them to disk at that exact moment, and may wait a period of time before flushing that cache. If the last write was inconsistent, or partial, then ejecting the disk ends up with partial writes to the disk. That's what the whole "eject safely" thing is about.

You can fix this, by turning off the write cache.. however, this will reduce the performance of the writes to disk as they won't be able to be fire and forget anymore. Each write will have to wait for the disk to fully finish before the app can continue on.

 

See if Minitool Partition Wizard helps.
Use the Partition Recovery feature: How to Make Partition Recovery | MiniTool Partition Wizard Tutorial

The free home edition works well - or download the ISO and burn it to a bootable CD (it's small)

 

Trying that too, thanks mate!

 

Partition Wizard (PW) has been good for other members with similar drive troubles. If PW can read the disk, there's a good chance to recovery the partition, which is different from file recovery. The structure is intact and all folder/filenames are as they were - no cryptic names.

Good luck.

 

Still, I could cry.

Write-cache is always disabled on my side. The smallest file on that disk ist around 100MB, the largest a few gigs.

Googling reveals it's just not an option for a lot of users to safely eject, be it a driver or an OS locking issue, it's all just sad really.

Considering how much we rely nowadays on (USB attached) external storage to exchange or store data, I still think it's ridic how little effort MS puts into safety and integrity there.
It cant be that hard to build in a couple of (more/better) safeguards to protect our data.

But then again, there's a whole industry of safety/recovery/restoration tools, hdd and flash drive manufacturers and whatnot out there that needs feeding.

 

Yeah, there are some processes that 'lock' a volume or the drive. Indexing might be one (search gatherer, windows crawl....). Sometimes, I can hit safely remove a second time and it works, other times if I wait a few minutes and try again it works. I think it's a matter of timing rather than a technical issue - whatever is stopping the eject has to let go.

Some processes aren't always active (set to run only when the system idle) - but they retain the 'lock'. I agree with you that if it's a MS process, then the eject process should occur in timely manner, not wait for the process to wake up and let go.

I've just become resigned to the fact that the only sure way to remove a ext HDD is to power down, then disconnect.

Bill
.

 

Use testdisk (or dd_descue if drive is physically damaged). Yes it takes forever, it's a 2 TB drive. I think testdisk can rebuild the MFT or MBR.

 

I know what you mean. My new go-to method too. But....INACCEPTABLE!

 

TestDisk is on it's 2nd try. I can get all the files to show and copy but the result is totally corrupted. Let's see what happens in the 2nd run.

 

I've almost given up. I'll do a 2nd run with TestDisk and see what happens.

But I've come to realize that it all takes too much time. I've got unlimited Newsgroup Access (free trial, yay) and unmetered Gigabit fiber, so I'll just redownload the stuff.

 

I had a similar problem with a 1.5TB drive --suddenly showed up as raw. Was able to recover nearly all the files using Active@File Recovery --but it took 14 hours to do a "superscan" of the drive. It's a very slow process, but it found nearly all the files.

They also have a freeware product know as Active@Partition Recovery. You could try that to see what it does.

 

Thanks for all the tips guys. Given up, none of the tools worked. I think I may have f'ed it up along the way lol.

Anyway, re-downloaded and reformatted the drive. All good now.

Btw, tested about 15 apps, except one, none of them gave me the possibility to export a file list of the files found. Weird considering this - at least to me - is an important part even if the restoration would have worked out.
A couple of the apps actually listed all the files and seemed to be under the impression they could restore those. 2 of them actually succeeded in RAW mode to restore the files but without folder structure and garbled naming.