Data recovery from a crashed hard disk

Question

One of my hard disks is failing and I need to recover some data from it (mostly photos). It's not the boot disk, which is an SSD. But as long as the failing hdd is connected, the system hangs on boot (Win 10). If I disable that hdd via BIOS, system boots.

So I'm thinking a bootable pendrive based recovery software that can work with possible bad sectors and broken fs. Or do I need to use a windows based data recovery with a SATA to USB enclosure (I imagine this will hangore than the former, what with the bad sectors)

Answer 1

Booting from a pen drive is the way to go.

If I were doing it I would get a second disk that is the same size or larger then the failing disk, then use a USB pen drive to boot a Linux distro and use ddrescue to bitcopy the failing drive, then try pull the data off under Windows, and if that fails use photorec.

You definately don't need Windows to do recovery at this level, and putting the failing disk in a USB enclosure is less then ideal as it abstracts the disk and makes it that much harder and slower.

Answer 2

So I'm thinking a bootable pendrive based recovery software

HDDSuperClone is your best option for bad drives, it rivals some pro hardware solutions. See: https://youtu.be/_xSXXW42Ouw.

Source: https://github.com/thesourcerer8/hddsuperclone Original website: https://www.hddsuperclone.com/hddsuperclone (ignore references to free/pro, it's freeware and open source now).

Answer 3

If your hard drive is logically damaged, there’s a chance that you can recover your data using in-computer techniques. If your drive has crashed or is corrupted, your data can become inaccessible. You can use the Disk Management utility on both Windows and Mac to fix this issue to access this data.

Follow these steps to recover your files using the Disk Management utility:

On Windows:

Press Windows + X and select the Disk Management option. Look for the crashed hard drive in the Disk Management panel If the hard drive is visible, you may format it to fix any errors and make the data accessible.

Recover Data using the CMD Prompt

The CMD or Command Prompt is another method that can be used to repair issues with a corrupt or crashed hard drive. While it might appear slightly technical, you run the CHKDSK command on your PC to fix problems without formatting your drive.

Here’s how you can run the CHKDSK command and repair your hard drive:

Press Win + X, and select the Command Prompt (Admin) option. Type chkdsk and press Enter to analyze the errors in your damaged hard drive. Type chkdsk C: /f /r/x to fix the drive

or Last you can try out some data recovery software. I hope these methods will help you out.