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Summary:

My HDD is (pretending to) fail. I tried a few types of recovery software, none of which seem to help.

Except for one. WinHex. Proof. It views it perfectly.

I have no clue what hex editing is. I'm not even sure what this software is for. As far as I know, it is not designed for problems like this. If it has a function that could possibly save it, I do not know which nor how.

What is happening, why can only this software read it, and how do I restore my drive to its normal state?


Extra info:

Specs:

  • Win 7 Pro

  • Samsung laptop

  • LaCie Porsche 4TB External HDD drive SATA via USB... with very rare data.

Noise: The disk doesn't make any typical HDD-fail sounds.

About WinHex: The folder sizes look small, but once you get to the actual files they are all accurate. Everything's there.

SMART: Someone recommended me to do some SMART tests, and research led me to smartctl. Someone else recommended GSmartControl.

This is what it says:

smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [i686-w64-mingw32-win7(64)-sp1] (sf-5.43-1)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Vendor:               ST4000DM
Product:              000-1F2168      
Revision:             CC52
User Capacity:        4.000.787.030.016 bytes [4,00 TB]
Logical block size:   4096 bytes
Device type:          disk
Local Time is:        Thu Apr 07 00:33:46 2016 SAWST
Device does not support SMART

Error Counter logging not supported
Device does not support Self Test logging

This should be enough information, but just in case you'd like more anyway, (I recommend skipping to save time), more after the break.

How do I save my obviously saveable disk?



Redundant Backstory:

Been having sudden, unexpected issues with my External HDD. Went to do some preemptive work, ran HDD Regenerator, it asked me to disable AHCI mode for my drive, which as far as I remember was working just fine, so I did, and as soon as I switched the option in BIOS and reset it, while loading Win7, PC gave a quick BSoD and flashed off only to repeat the cycle every boot.

So I re-enabled AHCI mode and weirdly enough the issue was fixed.

Except for my HDD. It could never be accessed again.

I tried numerous recovery softwares and methods, none of which gave results, or would just hang, until I somehow got WinHex which shows me the entire drive's contents, in seconds, perfectly complete, can browse it from inside the GUI, no issues.



Thanks so much in advance.

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It seems that your filesystem is corrupt.

WinHex can as specified here:

recover deleted files or lost data from hard drives with corrupt file systems

When you look at this video here, WinHex can recover folders and files from your harddrive using Recover/Copy comand - however it might not be available in the evaluation version & you will have to buy a license or let someone with the license to recover your data.

If you want to try some free tools for HDD recovery, before you buy a license for WinHex or similar products/other products, a good collecition of free tools is on Hirens Boot CD.

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  • That will require an extra 4TB of storage I am currently not in the possession of. Surely there's a way to fix whatever corrupted the file system itself so I can directly access all my (otherwise unmodified) files? I also can't save it back to the same disk like he does, because there is still the issue of the disk being inaccessible by any other program, including Windows Explorer.
    – Frudell D.
    Apr 7, 2016 at 8:14
  • Data recovery works like this - first you copy your data somewhere else from the corrupted source, then you format it and review your disk and then you perhaps copy your data back. But it did probably get not corrupted for nothing. Apr 7, 2016 at 8:38

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