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3 TB Hard-Drive: Filesystem Unknown (RAW) after bad disconnection
Hi people!
Following Jumanji's instructions in another thread, I come here to post a help request about the issue I'm
currently having with one of my storage hard-disks.
1- The story:
Currently at my parents, using their old laptop.
I recently bought a huge USB hub (13 ports, no less!) to connect the gazillion USB peripherals I use (some of
them on a daily basis), like scanner/printer, Master MIDI keyboard, MIDI controller, joystick, driving wheel,
gamepad, digital joysticks adapter, several memory sticks and external enclosures for 2.5" and 3.5" Hard-Disks, laptop cooling fan, and not forgetting mouse dongle and retrolighted keyboard, etc.
I suspected 13 USB ports might cause trouble in terms of alim so I bought an external power supply for it (5V,
2A) instead of relying on its 2 USB plugs.
It went ok for a while (say, a couple weeks), then trouble finally came a few days ago: I only had 2 USB slots
working, out of the 13 of the hub (one was an external enclosure with 2,5" HD labeled under the drive letter J: by Windows, the other was another external enclosure with a 3,5" HD of 3 TB capacity, labelled O:\AudioContent" under Windows), when suddenly, the external 3,5" HD got disconnected under Vista for no apparent reason (no USB cable was even slightly moved, and no special operation on my part). I should add that I was only browsing the 3 TB hard drive when the disconnection happened. I was not doing any writing action (copying/moving/renaming files or whatever else). Of course, Windows on the other hand seems always eager to write to sensible sections, making a hot or unexpected unpluging always very perilous.
And sure enough, when I tried to connect the drive back (having removed the big 13 slots USB hub of course!), the drive was corrupt: it goes for about one minute with the external enclosure's LED blinking before the drive is finally detected under Windows as "O:\ Unknown Filesystem", followed by the classic message asking to format the drive in order to use it.
My first reaction was to try EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to check what was still foundable on the drive: much (if not all...?) of its folders arborescence and many files (can't say whether they were ALL foundable, since the deepscan would have gone for more than 24hours to check it all).
2- The details:
- Computer: an old Compaq/HP Presario C750 laptop (2GB RAM) under Vista Home Premium Edition.
The Internal HD of the laptop is partitioned in 3 (partitions C:\, D:\ and E:\ are all the same internal drive of
the computer)
- Faulty HD: a Western Digital (WD30EZRX, cf. screenshot), 3,5" format, 3 TB capacity (actually made of 2 disks inside: one of 2199 GB, the 2nd of 801 GB -- only the first one of 2199 GB was ever used, formatted as NTFS GPT partition, and written to. The 2nd smaller one was left to be formatted for later once the 2st would have been filled up). This HD was connected via an external (openable) SATA USB enclosure, and labelled as "O:\AudioContent" (Now "O:\ Unknown Filesystem"). This drive should be in perfect shape still (Hard Disk Sentinel still reports it as 100% healthy & performance), it was bought about 8 months ago and was ONLY used as storage (ie. plugged, copied to, unplugged), hence very short total powered on and working time.
- In the Disk Manager: Filesystem appears as RAW (please check the attached screenshot -- sorry, it's in french because french Windows version here). Faulty drive is Disque 2 (O:\) _AND_ Disque 3 (Unallocated).
- In TestDisk: (please check the corresponding screenshots -- very last screenshot is when choosing Drive O: instead of disk /dev/sdc)
That's about it I guess (hopefully I didn't overdo it with all the screenshots!). I'm waiting for your advice and skillful help (as eagerly as you can imagine -- for about 2 TB of collected data over the last 5 years are stored on that drive!) as to what are the best steps to take now.
(NB: Please note that I'd be able to image my drive in the state it is now (with DD under Linux) so as to revert back to it (in case things go wrong with further steps taken), if you deem it useful... ?)
Now standing by for further intructions... (^_-)
-- Angar