Windows 10: Windows 10 - The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable

I don't have a lot money for data recovery company to recover my data. But, I do have money for buy a new hard drive.
I don't mean to fix the hard drive but, what I mean is to fix the data that is still not recovered by data recovery software.
I will take your advice to use ddrescue and recover my data form my broken hard drive to new hard drive.

The data is important. But, I will not cost my wallet for $500 just for this. I just need try to "I can live with that".

Yes, I will take his advice. I will do that once I get my freetime. I will post the result later.

Reformatted, Unallocated, Deleted. I already know how to deal with them. But, this one is a whole new problem to me.

 

"The data is important. But, I will not cost my wallet for $500 just for this. I just need try to "I can live with that"."

OK, decks cleared.

Now listen. Professional data Recovery agents are not going to rip it open to do a Data recovery since your HDD does not have a mechanical fault. It is just a corruption of file system due to bad sectors. HardDisk Sentinel says that there are some bad sectors and shows 96% health. (I have a mini PC that is still running with 94% health. Obviously there are some bad sectors but fortunately not in a critical area and that hasn't grown for years. The PC is still working fine and I have a paid version of HardDisk Sentinel continuosly monitoring it whenever I run the PC. . Just a month or two ago I ran it to update.) Professional Data recovery is just going to run some software to retrieve the data in the first instance and only if a catastrophic failure occurs during that process will resort to more elaborate procedures to retrieve the data.

Now do this. Download the trial version of active @ file recovery Active@ File Recovery: download evaluation version for free , run the HDD scan. If it finds all your files, you can even open and preview the files to check their integrity. Can you see everything and satisfied? Buy a licence (USD 29) and copy all files to another HDD. (If successful send me a cheque for USD 371 (USD 400 minus USD 29 you paid for the software) *Wink)

( I can go through an elaborate investigation to find out where exactly the bad sector is and check for any possibility of restoring the drive but I do not want to take the risk of losing the HDD in the process. Most of the times that process finally lead to the necessity of purchasing a commercial software like the active at file recovery or getdataback simple - except in one case, where it was not a bad sector -- https://www.sevenforums.com/hardware...-explorer.html )

 

Hey guys! I just brought a new 2TB disk drive and I take your suggestion to use ddrescue. I just starting now:




I will post the result later again. Is the any other suggestion you guys want to share? meanwhile the disk is in cloning process, thank you!

 

Disk imaging.

Had you been using disk imaging routinely as we repeatedly recommend, you would have had a compressed image of the used part of your disk you could have restored to a new disk.

Same for Windows- where such programs select and image all the partitions Windows uses.

Many advantages- saves time, no need for technical assistance, reduces stress and increases your life span (!), can be used if your PC is unbootable or infected with ransomware, acts as a full backup from which you can recover files. E.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + external storage.

For an SSD over USB3 maybe 9-12 mins to update an image of Windows. (Differential imaging).

 

Thanks, will do!

 

Hi guys, I just finished clone the bad drive into the new one. The result is exactly same with the bad one, I can't access the drive. What should I do next to fix the recovered bad disk (red mark) in the new disk or recover the data?




Anyway, here's the result from ddrescue:




And here's the log:




Many thanks!

 

Cloning a bad drive to a good one isn't the way to go. If you have managed to read the old drive (and some cloning progs will refuse if there are errors so I'm not sure how you achieved that) and copied it, there are likely to be errors.

What you need to do is make sure your new drive receives only valid data and a valid file structure is maintained.

Think copy data you've recovered to the new drive.

What is a clone? An exact copy - in this case with errors.

 

The result from cloning with ddrescue is exactly same with my first post

 

I don't think you've understood what I said.

Don't clone a bad disk. It's the wrong thing to do.

Of course you'll get the same result if you make an exact copy of bad data. So don't do it.

 

I disagree. If a disk is failing then it is better to clone it as it is. You can then run your recovery options on the clone. If a disk is failing and you run heavy I/O (which data recovery programs do) you risk making it worse and possibly end up with nothing.

The OP now has a clone - apparently (thankfully?) it is the same. There is not therefore a (hardware) risk trying to recover the data from it. I absolutely agree with @Porthos initial suggestion.

 

@lxo7 my assumption was the OP is trying to boot his system from the cloned drive, hoping it would no work. I though he had already recovered what data he could. Note he refers to post #1.

In any event, he can expect some problems accessing the data on the cloned drive.

I agree the cloned drive can be used for data recovery as you say.

 

"Don't clone a bad disk. It's the wrong thing to do."- dalchina

Sorry, that is the right thing to do. And the right tool is to clone with ddrescue which runs on Linux.. ( Conventional Imaging/cloning software running on Windows or even Win PE may not clone a drive with bad sectors. Cloning in most cases will fail, their algorithm designed to image/clone a working drive without any fatal errors.)

@dalchina, 1. I don't think the OP is cloning his boot drive. Nowhere has he said so.

2. Even in a case of failing boot drive ddrescue was used successfully to recover the data. If I remember correctly one user was able to boot successfully from the ddrescue- cloned drive and access the lost partition in the boot drive.

Edit: I found that thread. Cant access partition, slow system & file record segment unreadable. Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums

OP: HighFlyerPL185: " have made a clone to the new drive, booted it up and it seems to run very well

Every program I had installed runs fine, and I can access the lost partition! Here's a shot as requested from the Disk Manager; hoping that this is the end of the trouble...

GoKay:" Nice

Did you run the ddrescue command or some other method? And did the faulty partition just showed up like that after cloning?"

HighFlyerPL185: " I ran the last command given by , and yes, it showed up like this."

And that command given was ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sda /dev/sdb recovery.log

3. Even if ddrescue fails to recover the data from the bad sectors, one can run the data recovery software safely on the cloned drive keeping aside the failing drive which we do not want to tax further.

Please take sometime and read this thread to know more about what we had discussed on ddrescue and other user experiences.
https://www.sevenforums.com/general-...-recovery.html
And also https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescu...ue_manual.html

simrick another VIP member of this forum has said this ".....I used your dd-rescue instructions in sevenforums to recover data on a 4%-health-remaining-drive that was almost totally dead; saved my Uncle's precious data (which was *not*, of course, backed up anywhere" )"

And of course ddrescue may not always be successful in recovering the data from bad sectors - depends upon how good the bad sectors are or how bad that bad sectors are - but then point 3 above comes into relevance..

 

1. I would like to know how you ran ddrescue . The procedure we had outlined previously is to run ddrescue from a bootable System Rescue pendrive and use the command ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc recovery.log. The command you had given is slightly different being -f -d -v -r3 /dev/sdb /dev/sda /opt /recovery.log ( I am not worried about the nomenclature of the source drive and destination drive. You must have given it as you found it.)In particular what does the /opt switch do? Please elaborate exactly how you ran ddrescue from the beginning as you would guide a newbie wanting to run it. That should be helpful for others.

2. I presume you have a desktop in which you have the faulty drive and also the now cloned HDD. Please post a full screenshot of Windows Disk Management showing all your drives as per the guidelines here Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of Truncated screenshots not acceptable.

3. On the cloned drive run active @ file recovery as recommended in my post #15 and report the results.

4. Also name the data recovery software/s you had run previously and if you had recovered the data already what more do you want aka why do you want any further data recovery?

We shall then try to get the juice out of the cloned drive. It is going to be an elaborate process, which may or may not succeed. In the event TestDisk finds the MFT corrupted - which is one of the many reasons why a drive can turn into RAW - and unable to repair it, you have to necessarily buy a commercial software as aforesaid. Reason why I am asking you to try that first with Active@FileRecovery. Other commercial software recommended by Christopher Granier, author of TestDisk are GetDataBack simple, Zero Assumption Recovery - both costlier than Active@FileRecovery. We know of many users who used these two - A@FR and GDB - and successfully recovered the data after TestDisk failed to repair the MFT.