Troubleshoot Hard Disks

Edited by Seighart, Nlangster, VC, Maria Quinney and 4 others

6 Parts: Tips on Buying Hard Disks Troubleshoot when External Hard Disks are not showing Troubleshoot when the Drive turns into Raw Partition or inaccessible drive Recovering Files from a drive that accidentally turned into a raw partition
...More
HDD.jpg

Tips on Buying Hard Disks

  1. 1
    Check The serial Number at the Drive and check if warranty is Valid.
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  2. 2
    When Buying a new drive, Always Format it once.
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  3. 3
    Run Check Disk Utility to check for bad sectors for the new drive before use.These are the Drives that I prefer:
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  • Seagate
  • Transcend
  • Toshiba
  • Western Digital
  • Sony
  • Hitachi

Troubleshoot when External Hard Disks are not showing

  1. 1
    If the drive is blinking from faint and strong light, wait patiently for it to be read as a drive.
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  2. 2
    Place your ear near the drive to see if it's spinning and troubleshoot problems based on the user manual.
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  3. 3
    Transfer it into another port, as Such not all ports have equally distributed powers of electricity running through then replace the cable to check if running
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  4. 4
    Test it into another computer
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  5. 5
    Uninstall and reinstall the driver of the said drive into the computer
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  6. 6
    Seek Professional help.
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Troubleshoot when the Drive turns into Raw Partition or inaccessible drive

  1. 1
    Eject The Drive and plug it again, if it's still not accessible uninstall the driver from the device manager and Plug and unplug the drive.
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  • 2
    If 1 doesn't work Run the Check Disk Utility on the said Drive.
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  • 3
    If 2 doesn't work, It is either the the section of the the partition that is responsible for booting may be damaged or corrupted these are those two
    .
    - The "Boot Sector" - The "Master Boot Record" There are third party programs that may be able to restore these but should only be done with those with knowledge about it.
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  • 4
    If the Step 3 is still not the answer to the drive problem, then the problem is much more delicate
    .
    It means that the boot sector is no longer recoverable unless the drive is formatted but do not format it yet because if you wish to recover files from this type of problem read on to the next step.
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    • Recovering Files from a drive that accidentally turned into a raw partition

    1. 1
      When a Drive is a Raw Partition or inaccessible drive, Do not format it to preserve the files inside the drive
      .
      The files within the drive is still in order and in tact and can be seen if you have installed the partition table doctor use the browse function in the said drive and the files will be seen inside still in tact. If for some reason there is no longer any recognizable files inside the drive The recovery process will now turn into a recovery from files from a drive that is formatted.
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    2. 2
      When Recovering files from a drive, it is extremely important that the drive that is being recovered should not be designated as the target folder for recovery as such will result in the mixing of header and hexadecimal values of the files and will then mix.
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    3. 3
      Prepare and equal amount of free space to the target recovery drive from the drive being recovered.
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    4. 4
      Here is a list of the top recovery software based on my insights- Stellar Phoenix - R-Studio (my favorite)- Data Recovery Wizard- Recover My Files- Data Rescue
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    5. 5
      For recovery of files within a raw partition, Stellar Phoenix NTFS Recovery Software and R-Studio Recovery Software would be the top choice because they provide the fastest way of scanning intact files within the Drives that turned RAW
      .
      Scanning takes about 15min/300Gb of disk space. Because it scans every sector, this may differ if the drive itself is composed of more clusters.
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    6. 6
      After Scanning the Drives The Two Will show Directory trees that was originally present within the drive and as well of some deleted files and the RECYCLE Folder
      .
      Check the desired files to be recovered and prepare the target drive for recovery.
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    7. 7
      Recovery of files takes about 3-5 hours per 100Gb of data
      .
      It Is Important that proper ventilation and heat management of the processing CPU/Laptop to be applied in order to prevent sudden shutdowns in the recovery process. The length of time will also Differ if the Target destination would be through a network or Burning the files into the DVD, by estimates the time would increase by 30-40 percent.
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    8. 8
      After Recovering All the Files in the drive, double check for any damaged or out of shape items in the recovered drives especially documents as they are the usually damaged in case of sudden hardware failures.
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    9. 9
      If Some files are broken or missing, it means that the search needs to go deeper into each partition of the drives
      .
      This type of scan usually takes 14 hours at most for a 450Gb, and is usually performed to drives that are accidentally formatted. It will do the search then just recover it again to the targeted folder that's not in the drive being recovered from.
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    10. 10
      After Recovery of all drives has been made, Format the Drive and Check for errors within the partitions, if still unsure run some tests by the aid of third party software
      .
      Transfer the recovered files into the newly formatted drive and always safely remove or eject the drives
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    Questions and Answers

    Can you help, I did all the steps but still can not recover my files?

    I did all the steps but still can not recover my files.

    If you've performed all the steps above and you are still unable to recover your files, they are very likely gone for good. You can take your hard drive to a professional data recovery service, but you may be out of luck. If you'd like to look at your options for professional data recovery, check the list below:

    If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.

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    Article Info

    Categories : Hardware

    Recent edits by: Visihow Admin, Inukshuk, Calob Horton

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