4 TB Toshiba is now showing no Partitions. Any Quick Options?

[Ketchup]

Backstory: 4 TB drive is backed up but was removed from the server for a trip. Connected to Win 7 laptop through a dock and Windows wanted to format the drive (no partition found). Need some options. Here is where I am at ATM:

Web searches seems to indicate that Test Disk was the best option here. They had a nice little tutorial on their site at https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step.

The problem is this is going to take FOREVER. After running for 8 hours it is at 10%. If this wasn't GPT I could probably just run fixmbr and be done with it. For GPT, I am not finding anything nearly as simple and fast.

BTW, I do have reason to believe the drive my be on its way out. But I would like the drive to hang on for the next couple days, and Toshiba's full drive test, like test disk, takes hours.

 

[Smoblikat]

Does disk managment show any partitions on it? Might be as simple as assigning it a drive letter. Though if windows is asking to format, it could genuinely be corrupted.

 

[UsandThem]

CrystalDiskInfo should be able to tell you the health of the drive without having to run a long test.

 

[Ketchup]

DM wants to format the drive before it will do anything, hence my predicament.

SMART info and Toshiba's short test say ok, but last week it started losing data in sectors (they seem ok after a couple chkdsk runs), and now the partition table is seeningly corrupted.

 

[Ken g6]

Once upon a time I found a tool to detect and recover partition information. I think it's Linux based.

I don't remember exactly what I used, but there seem to be lots of options now. https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-free-portable-recovery-tools/ for starters.

 

[Ketchup]

Thanks. Many of these are for data recovery, which I may resort to when I get back to the house (99% of what is on here is already backed up), just hoping I was missing something that could speed up this process a bit. Testdisk is up to 15%.

 

[Ketchup]

So TestDisk up to 20% after starting the "quick search" as the scan is approaching the 24-hour mark.

I am considering just allowing Windows to re-create the GPT, run a quick format, and let Recuva recover data. Can anyone think of a reason this wouldn't give me at least a good bit (1 tb+) of data back (since I won't be overwriting anything)?

 

[Elixer]

So TestDisk up to 20% after starting the "quick search" as the scan is approaching the 24-hour mark.

I am considering just allowing Windows to re-create the GPT, run a quick format, and let Recuva recover data. Can anypne think of a reason this wouldn't give me at least a good bit (1 tb+) of data back (since I won't be overwriting anything)?

I believe it is taking so long since it is finding issues with the HD (bad sectors, or whatever).
I assume this is way too late now, but, ddresuce is really the go to tool for this job, let it grind away, then work on the cloned drive to get files back.

You may be able to quick format it again, but, I have a feeling you will still see the slowness when recuva starts to work.

Good luck!

 

[Ketchup]

Well Recuva is seeming to be much more productive at least, after the letting it do a quick format. 71k files found at 36% and about a day to go, so it says. Much better shape than it was before, where I was expecting a possible "long" test after the "short" one was expected to end two days from now.

 

[Ketchup]

CrystalDiskInfo gives me a caution on reallocated sector count. Also the full scan of Recuva found a lot of files that were still just fine, but once recovered they won't run with their respective programs (executables, videos, pics, etc). The Toshiba test program won't see the disk, presumably because it's attached through USB. Once I get it to to house I should have a better idea as to the actual status of the drive.

 

[Ketchup]

Finally got it hooked up to the desktop, and this is just odd (Disk 0):

The properties screen is from the unallocated space, the only space I can actually do anything with. Can't assign a drive letter on the GPT partition. I ran Toshiba's full test last night and it didn't find any issues (it runs for several hours). So this is just weird, as the whole drive showed one large GPT partition when I removed it from the dock a few days ago.

My next step is trying this:
https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/gpt-protective-partition.html

Should be able to get to it some time this week.

 

[Elixer]

So this is just weird, as the whole drive showed one large GPT partition when I removed it from the dock a few days ago.

What dock is this?

I had a dock do just that, until I found a firmware update for it, since apparently, it didn't support >2GB out of the box.

 

[Ketchup]

Hmm.. makes me wonder if that was the problem from the beginning, the sector issues from earlier just making the issue seem worse than it was.

The dock is a Nexin Datasense. Part number nex-ns1u3. According to a rep from Nexin, 4 TB should be supported, but I can't help but wonder if he was dead wrong here.
https://www.amazon.com/ask/questions/Tx9FIE08PPBQFM?_encoding=UTF8&sort=helpful

Unfortunately, I was in a rush when leaving, and had never tested the drive on the dock before this occurrence.

I also cannot find a website for them. The box says www.thenexin.com, but the site comes up as available, so they may be defunct.

 

[Elixer]

Apparently, that unit uses ASMedia ASM1153E chipset, and looking at https://plugable.com/drivers/hddockfirmware/ I see that the same chipset did have firmware updates to fix >2GB HDs.

They provided a tool (ASMedia Firmware Check Utility) to check on that page (no idea if that is generic or not, I assume it is), and a scan shows https://www.virustotal.com/#/url/6a...208015fa888a3a277d26ec03557c78d5a02/detection

Asmedia's own site don't have squat that I can tell.

 

[Ketchup]

Just as an update, used the link I posted above and recovered a few files that I didn't have recent-enough backups of, deleted the partition, made a new one covering the entire drive, and recovered everything from the backups.

So far so good. I appreciate the input folks.