Need help recovering data from Western Digital Elements external hard drive

[Drakula]

I hope I posted this in the correct section of the forum.

I got a 1TB Western Digital Elements external hard drive last Black Friday, it was a fairly good deal.

Anyway, the problem occurs when I was trying to transfer data couple days ago when I noticed that the transfer speed was sluggish, even to a point where it was taking a long time just to transfer small files. So I ejected it with Safely Remove tray icon and rebooted Windows to see if just some program acting up.

However, when I reboot and plugged in the external hard drive, the Windows would either take a long time to respond or it just stuck at "Welcome" screen for a long time. I then remembered that Events Viewer would sometimes show what happened, so I looked into it and it said that the drive have "bad block". I tried to access the hard drive, but it would take an unbearable long long time to even try to open it.

I then ran chkdsk and it the during the first step, it showed more than a dozen of "File Record Segment blah blah Unreadable" and during the second step, it shows Index being repair and delete and orphan files being recover. Though I still cannot seem to access the drive.

I just ran the Wester Digital Data Lifeguard today and it failed the Quick Test, but passed the Extended Test. I suspect the file system might be damaged as well. I Googled the symptoms but cannot find a solution.

Has anyone encountered this kind of problem before and was able to recover however much data from it? Is there any software that I can use to help recovering the data? Can I use Linux like Knoppix to access it? Has anyone done it before? Sorry for all the questions, been quite a while since I had to deal with failing drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Mashed Potato]

Knoppix has helped me recover many 'a informations from "dead" hard drives. Just leave it plugged in while you boot Knoppix, if you are lucky it will pick right up on it and you can copy all the goods. good luck.

 

[Gunbuster]

http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

 

[Drakula]

Knoppix has helped me recover many 'a informations from "dead" hard drives. Just leave it plugged in while you boot Knoppix, if you are lucky it will pick right up on it and you can copy all the goods. good luck.

Okay, thank you. Is there any particular version that is good and support USB? Or latest version should be fine?

http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

Thanks, I tried that before, it helps to recover some data. Have yet to try on this drive. But it takes a long time to access the drive, I am not even sure if I can access it outright. Chkdsk did show that there are still files. Is there any way to fix that first before recovering the data?

 

[Laputa]

The repair you did might make things worse...never let Windows do stupid repairs.

 

[Drakula]

The repair you did might make things worse...never let Windows do stupid repairs.

Yeah, you are right. I am currently using Knoppix to access the drive and the files that Chdsk supposedly "recover" cannot be seen, though the used hard drive space seems to remain unchanged. Anyone got ideas on how I might be able to read or recover those files in Knoppix? Windows takes way too long to read the drive, Knoppix seems to read it faster.

Thanks.

 

[RebateMonger]

Consumer-level data recovery software isn't made to handle extensive physical disk damage. If physical damage isn't too extensive, then data recovery software like GetDataBack (mentioned above) can help unscramble things that neither Windows nor Knoppix will be able to unscramble on their own.

If you can't access the disk at all, then the only hope is to repair the physical damage, which usually is a job for professionals.

 

[Drakula]

Consumer-level data recovery software isn't made to handle extensive physical disk damage. If physical damage isn't too extensive, then data recovery software like GetDataBack (mentioned above) can help unscramble things that neither Windows nor Knoppix will be able to unscramble on their own.

If you can't access the disk at all, then the only hope is to repair the physical damage, which usually is a job for professionals.

Well, it turns out that Windows have problem reading or even recognize the drive as been formatted. However, Knoppix can read it and in fact, I used it to copy some data from it, about 30% or so, and it seems to be able to read about 70% or so of data. It is the rest of the data that supposedly "recovered" by Windows that somehow disappeared even though the space are still taken up by those data.

 

[Drakula]

Got a question for the people that use Linux, especially Knoppix, is ntfsfix any better than chkdsk?