I’ve got one that was not ejected properly and now is inaccessible.
Thanks for any help you might be able to give.
Even if you like reboot the computer and power cycle the drive it won’t
mount? What kind of error does it give you?
Steve
Dang, it’s at work, they just told me before i left and I’m on vacation all next week. I’ll have them leave it until then and get back to you. Thanks!
I have done drive recovery as one time contracts, as a hobby, and for an employer. It is always possible to recover the data, especially if nobody has tried anything to try to fix it yet.
What interface? USB. eSATA, SCSI, other?
Do you know what interface the drive itself is?
Is there a single drive in an enclosure, or is it an external raid, or something else?
What file system?
What is the capacity, and how valuable is the data?
What actually happened, was it just powered off, or was the data cable unplugged? Most importantly what has been done since it was found to not be accessible to try to fix it.
Mike B
Usb, single drive. It has 1 week of work on it by another guy. Literally spent all week on it. Everything before this week is backed up.
It was apparently yanked from the usb port before windows finished ejecting it.
One week isn’t as terrible as it could be. Just 40 hours of time lost.
If you want me to look at it, let me know. If there is a way to pay for my time that would also be nice.
Mike B
Oh, I forgot to ask about encryption. If this drive has whole drive encryption, recovery may be out of the question with what tools I have available.
Mike B
F:\ is not accessible. Access denied. That is the error message when trying to access the drive.
Sounds like mikeb probably has the tools and experience that you need.
Personally, I’d probably try plugging it in to a computer running Linux.
You can some times work around filesystem issues from Linux better than
from Windows (or at least I think I can).
The part of this that kind of boggles my mind though, is why is the only
copy of work on a USB drive? Was the work being done on the USB drive?
That just sounds like a bad idea to me. Do your work on a local hard
drive or a network attached drive and then use the USB drive as the
backup or a way to take the work with you if you need to.
Steve
Ya that would be a better idea. I couldn’t tell you why the only copies were on the drive. Its not the way I would’ve done it. Thanks @ssaner
I agree with everything Steve said here.
The first attempt goes something like this:
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I use dd on Linux with the drive not mounted to make a file that is an exact image of the drive.
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Then make a binary copy of that file to use as a working copy.
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Then disconnect the drive and work on the copy of the image.
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If the problem is very simple and the copy of the image only needs a minor tweak to be able to be mounted and read then that altered image can be written to the device and tried.
The original image being left alone can always be used to restore the drive to the condition it was received in. If the drive cannot be written to, then the customer can provide something that the repaired image can be written to.
This is assuming the only issue is file system meta-data corruption. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes there is more than one problem.
If there is whole disk encryption, then there is essentially only hope if the passphrase is provided and still works. Some drives or external drive systems may do hardware encryption and if so, then the key is more than just the passphrase and may be unrecoverable without a lot of work.
I would need to know what version of windows was used, whether there is a password used to access the drive beyond what is used to log into windows (and if so, what that password is). What software name and version came with the external drive, if the software was used and was the drive used on more than one system (work taken home or to a service bureau).
The more information provided the better the chances of recovery.
Mike B
I bet a check disk would fix it if it’s just a simple improper unmounted filesystem.
I would run open a command prompt and run the following command:
chkdsk /f F:
They tried that a couple days ago.
You might have to dive into file recovery like mikeb was suggesting. Probably should clone the drive before attempting a recovery.
TestDisk / PhotoRec might be something worth looking at.