Windows 10: Hard drive recovery question

Discus and support Hard drive recovery question in Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware to solve the problem; So i messed up and changed something around with how the files work on my slave drive and rendered it unusable. Now the drive is in RAW format. I ran... Discussion in 'Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware' started by Jazz Iguana, Aug 27, 2015.

  1. Hard drive recovery question


    So i messed up and changed something around with how the files work on my slave drive and rendered it unusable. Now the drive is in RAW format. I ran Easeus data recovery and was able to get access to the files on that drive.

    I have two options, since i haven't enough space to put all this data somewhere else (over 1,000 GB)

    1. Format the hard drive so its readable and in the correct format, THEN do a recovery of the drive and then save onto said drive.

    2. Try and save the recovered files on the drive

    So my question is...are either of those options possible? or do i have to find another way?

    thanks in advanced!

    :)
     
    Jazz Iguana, Aug 27, 2015
    #1

  2. How to make recovery drive in Windows 10

    Actually I want to make recovery drive on my hard drive, also "to create recovery drive " is showing an error "a problem occurred while creating recovery drive" and please reread my question
     
    SivakethanSuddapalli, Aug 27, 2015
    #2
  3. Ken Blake Win User
    C: and D: drives

    There is no general answer to that question.

    First of all, is your D: drive a hard disk drive or partition?

    Second, is is called something like "Recovery Drive"> That's likely what it is, but it's not always the case.

    If it's a recovery drive, it's there for you to reinstall Windows from if you should want or need to.

    If it's a hard drive or partition and it's *not* a recovery drive, what you use it for is entirely up to you.

    And by the way, the fact that it's a notebook rather than a desktop is irrelevant.
     
    Ken Blake, Aug 27, 2015
    #3
  4. Hard drive recovery question

    Is your data important? Once you format the drive and change it to NTFS it will make recovering your files will be much more difficult and your chances of recovering files will decrease as you move more data or add more data. Your first option sounds good on paper but you need to remember that once it gets formatted you WILL lose partial data. It could be very severe or very minimal, no way to know. Second when you recover data and copy it over, it will not be written in the same location. You will AUTOMATICALLY lose more access to data as you write more data into the affected drive. Every time you write more data you could write data in sections that don't just affect one file but possible a large amount of data. Option one and two are almost identical, dangerous, and bad for your data. Go out and buy a HDD, these days you can buy 4TB HDD for a fraction of what I paid for them just 2 years ago.. A 1TB drive is insanely cheap today Amazon.com: WD Blue 1TB Desktop 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200rpm Internal Hard Drive: Computers Accessories
    (Did you need your drive to be external? Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport Ultra 2 TB Portable Hard Drive, Black (Old Model): Computers Accessories )

    Besides having more drives is always nice *Biggrin It's not a consumable it's something that will likely last you 5+ years.
     
    chris1neji, Aug 27, 2015
    #4
  5. There are a few other options open. A quick web search will reveal some freeware as well as free to try trial versions of any number of data recovery programs. Besides Easeus for example you also see GetDataBack for NTFS or Fat as two separate trial wares. Data Recovery Software Products - Runtime Software Products as well as Recuva, PC Inspector, PhotoRec, etc.

    What happens to a drive when Windows sees it as "Raw" is that some type of corruption with the file system on the drive has been seen where sometimes the mbr or partition information can be rewritten from a command prompt. When booted live with the 10 media you would use the command prompt option to enter the fixmbr command while any other drive is unplugged to avoid any changes elsewhere. The bootrec command is more common for the newer versions however. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixthe...or-windows.htm

    With one troublesome drive now 5yrs. old here that had been in the main build as the matching twin for a pair of 1tb drives set up for storage and back up purposes only one became inaccessible or took a long, long time ago in a place far, far away just to get on it to view the contents! Yet when stuffing it in an external usb enclosure it suddenly came to life again and now acts a temp storage drive in order to transfer or rescue files now only seeing light use.

    While a 1tb usb flash drive is still way higher then Mt Everest in price tags I grabbed a pair of 128gbs cheap one day at Amazon. As far as data recovery you are never actually writing more to any drive but reading what is on it as things are recovered. Then you have the option of bringing a spare fresh drive along with you to a shop that does specialty work like data recovery for a fee. That's where the shop keep is equipped to recover what can be recovered from any drive.

    Now for the problem drive here I had seen temporary relief by simply swapping out the data cable for a fresh replacement where then the drive was easily accessible. Dirt and debris can build up and put pressure on the plugs at times causing a coninuity type issue where a drive can appear to be bad. The move into the external enclosure suddenly making the drive easy to access could point to a possible clugged up or bad Sata port on the board itself.
     
    Night Hawk, Aug 27, 2015
    #5
  6. Yeah I was thinking that would probably be the case. I'm definitely going to get a 1TB external when the time is right. thanks for the links! I have a 100 gb external and a couple 50 gb usb sticks to hold me over for now.

    The files on this drive are irreplaceable so i definitely want to go the route where i can recover most, if not all the files. nothing has been written onto the drive since this happened.


    Thanks for all the helpful info! I will start looking into it after i make this post. If it helps, the mistake i made was i accessed 'diskpart' in the command prompt in an attempt to change my drive letter because it was changed to K: for whatever reason when i installed win10. the prompt said it was successfully changed. and that's when the drive became unreadable. I have reinstalled my os twice since then because of a separate problem.

    I do have 2 160 GB HDs but they're meant for internal use and i don't think my power supply has enough HD connectors to fit both of them and my 1TB HD *Mad
     
    Jazz Iguana, Aug 27, 2015
    #6
  7. Well the fist mistake seen was having the drive as well as any others plugged in when going to install 10! Typically the second drive once plugged back in should have seen the possibly E, F, G, or H drive letter assigned with D for the optical drive by default.

    I would never change the drive letter in a command prompt but simply go into the Disk Management where you can plainly see which letters are available for any extra drive with a fast right click to change letters. OPf that is from having four internal drives as well as one stuffed into the fan cooled note external usb enclosure. I found the problem as well as the other drive I switched out due tend to get Hot to Touch! Regarding data recovery however I thought you might get a kick out of this one! How To Repair Hard Disk Drive At Home
     
    Night Hawk, Aug 27, 2015
    #7
  8. Hard drive recovery question

    I had this same issue and almost lost all my photos and movies due to a SNAFU with my backup and primary at the same time. I changed a drive letter on my external Seagate 2TB, and hot unplugged / re-plugged it from a flaky USB hub. One of those things caused the disk file system to go RAW instead of NTFS. The recovery took about 5 minutes (after the near heart attack), and all my files were there and uncorrupted. I just followed the instructions here:
    From NTFS to RAW and back

    - change the drive letter (this step may not have even been necessary)
    - run chkdsk /f on the drive letter

    I ran across this post and was despondent, so figured I'd add this in case someone else has my same issue and can use the easy fix.
    Good luck!
     
    icufoundme, Dec 25, 2015
    #8
  9. That will never hurt! icufoundme Welcome to the Ten Forums!

    You mention a good point there since I have run into something very similar only on two internal drives while setting up a dual boot of 7 with the 8 Customer Preview back in 2012 where suddenly neither version would run! After unplugging one drive to run the Disk Check tool while booted live from the installation media I got each back running again but as stand alone OSs only. Together it was as if both OS drives had suddenly been wiped clean.

    With the external usb drive the OP mentions however the volume is accessible but keep slipping into obscurity as if the drive was suddenly unplugged. I've seen this with flash drives and printers as well as a drive in an enclosure when Windows seems to forget something is plugged in. The volumes on the drive in the enclosure as well what is on each flash when more then one just happened to be plugged have always remained intact. The refresh however serves to see each volume remounted in Windows again as a logical drive.
     
    Night Hawk, Apr 5, 2018
    #9
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