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Recover harddrive data

I have a 2TB Western Digital HDD (WD20EARS) and lately it worked very slow, I tried to copy some files and the speed was about 30kbps to 190kbps. At this moment i knew something is not good and I wanted to backup my data, but after a restart I got an MFT error and I cannot read my HDD content. In my computer I can only see the drive letter. How can I recover my data, or what software to use.

Any help is welcome

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closed as exact duplicate by techie007, random♦ Oct 18 '11 at 3:59

This question covers exactly the same ground as earlier questions on this topic; its answers may be merged with another identical question. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.

1 Answer

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  1. See the dupe I pointed out (lots of good suggestions in there). There's also plenty of 'how can I recover data from my hard drive" questions around here on SU fro you to peruse. :)

  2. Since it's a Western Digital drive, perhaps hit WD's software page and grab their diagnostics software (Data LifeGuard Diagnostics, A.K.A. "WDDiag").

If you can make a bootable CD or USB or floppy, use the DOS version and perform an Extended Test (it's a read-only test).

If you can't make a bootable device try the Windows version, but the DOS version tends to find and correct more issues.

WDDiag will either repair the problem or tell you the drive needs replacing (or tell you nothing's wrong with it). I would expect the extended test to take about an hour to complete on a 500GB drive.

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i tried to use wddiag, but it took too much time and the progress bar didn't move at all, i'll try again and i hope it fixes something... (i'll go for the dos version first) – Remus Rigo Oct 17 '11 at 22:50
@RemusRigo It could take hours for the extended test to complete. A good drive takes an hour. If the drive is really bad, WDDiag will (should) eventually time-out and give you a code, and some basic instructions. – techie007 Oct 17 '11 at 23:51
should i make a backup first? – Remus Rigo Oct 18 '11 at 0:31
How can you make a backup if you can't get at the data? Check out the ideas in the linked question first. – techie007 Oct 18 '11 at 3:40
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