[Solved] WD external hard drive problem

yes

 

Ok done. Format only took seconds? Screen shot below.

 

Yes, it only takes seconds as all it does is write a small file to the disk. The file is similar to an index in a book. The drive showed as raw because it didn't have an index. Now that you have that index, the Recuva program can attempt recovery on that drive.

Give me some time and I'll give you instructions to run the recovery program.

 

Thanks. Have to pop out for an hour. Will be back online by 4.30 latest.

 

Ok.

Here's the further instructions for when you get back:

Open the D drive (the drive that shows around 1800GB free), right click and choose "new folder". name it "Recovered Data".

Download and run the free version of "Recuva"

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva


- Choose "All files" at the type of recovery screen.

- At the next screen choose "In a specific location", then choose the G drive.

- At the next screen choose "Enable Deep Scan" and click Start.

The recovery will start and take a few hours. When it is complete, post back.

 

Hi Seth
When the scan completed it asked me to choose where to recover to so I chose the new folder " recovered data " hope I did right?
It is doing it now but is a few hours of finishing in so will advise you of the outcome tomorrow.
Is there anything else I need to do at this stage?

 

No, that's all fine.

How long did it take Recuva to search the drive?

 

All done OK. Search took about two hours & recovery twice that but well worth it. Not had time to fully check but it would appear most have been recovered in that GB size of the new folder " recovered data " is similar to what used to be in the external hd.
Interestingly it has saved them as 0001, 0002 and so on in a quite random order so I have much to do to get them back into individual folders. But that will be a pleasure.
I cannot begin to thank you Seth, without your expertise & patient guidance I would have lost those memories forever.

I have a couple of questions but I have to leave shortly & not back till late Sunday so perhaps we could catch up on Monday?

Once again, many, many thanks.

 

You're welcome.

You can also create a new folder and name it "Recovered 2", then run Recuva as you did, but this time on the 32GB F drive. That's one of the two drive partitions that was accidentally created on the WD external drive. It will have about 5 GB of W10 files stored on it, so about 27 GB of your files are still there.

I had asked you how the original files were saved to the drive, as I wanted to know if you still had the source files and if you had used the WD backup program to save all the files. Now, you have just mentioned that the files are numbered. This may be due to the file names being permanently lost, or because the WD backup does save the files in a zipped (compressed) format with numbers instead of file names. If you saved them using the WD backup program, then the WD backup program might be able to extract the file names. We'll see what happens when you try to open some of the recovered files.

Have a good weekend, and talk to you on Monday.

 

Thanks.

I'm still holding my breath until Tony says what happens when he tries to open the files.

 

Tony will have to make a backup of the recovered to the external drive. probably easiest to just copy the whole "Recovered Data" folder and paste it to the G drive.

 

Good evening Seth, I am back earlier than anticipated.
Good news is that whilst obviously I have no where near checked everything in the " recovered data " folder it would appear that all the pics are there nice & clear plus many videos. Most videos play OK, a few stop part way through but I can live with that So all in all a good result. As explained everything is now numbered from 0001 upwards quite randomly with no folders remaining. For instance a folder like " Holiday in Menorca " is not there anymore but the contents are except one pic might now be numbered 0010 & another 0910 when there were only say 50 items in that folder. Again no great problem except it will take some sorting out of everything back into folders. Nice little challenge for me.
You ask about the source files. I assume you mean can I access them elsewhere? No, all my pics & videos came from my camera, phone or the internet & whilst originally saved to an earlier computer were subsequently put on my WD external hard driven as a way of keeping them in one place & behind a passport. Obviously with hind site I should perhaps have used the WD as a back up rather than the only storage.
I want to follow your suggestion of a " Recovered 2 " folder & assume I follow your instructions in post #45 ? However will it be drive F that a create the new folder in rather than D as in post #45 & do I still use drive G as the " specific location " ?

 

Create the "Recovered 2" folder in Drive D. The same drive that you created the "Recovered" folder in.

You should be able to choose all the files in the recovered list of Revuva in 1 of 2 ways. You can put a checkmark in the checkbox to the left of "Filename" that's just above the list of recovered files. You can highlight the first entry, scroll to the bottom, hold the shift key and click on the last file. That will highlight all the files.

 

Sorry but not sure I am following you is it not the 27gb in F we are after now? So in what way do I adapt your instructions in post#45?
Surely the F drive has to be involved?

 

The F and the G drive are just partitions labeled as F and G on your external drive. Its physically the same drive. You have run the recovery on the G partition, so when all those recovered files are saved into the "Recovered" folder that you made on drive D, then make a new folder in drive D named "Recovered 2", run Recuva on drive F, and save the recovered files into the Recovered 2 folder.

 

OK thanks got you now.
Have just run the scan but it reported no files found?

 

Skip that scan for now. I'll get back to you in about an hour so.