External hard drive not accessible - how do I recover files

Hi again!

Sorry I couldn't answer earlier, I'm not online on the weekends. :)

The Device Manager screenshot shows a few USB connected devices, including a 500GB WD Caviar Blue, which is your internal drive. Still, the other USB connected external drive (not a pen drive or such) is the HDD inside the Iomega. That external giving you a “bad drive”-status in other software only proves it may not be fixable. :/

I can't be also sure if it will allow you to perform a clone, it may be too damaged. I hope not though. When you do that you could also try performing a data recovery from the drive using a software in your home environment. If the data is too important then data recovery would be the next step.

Very often also getting the drive outside of the enclosure may not be such a good idea. For that you need to check your HDD specs and your warranty status.

Good luck! :)

CK_WD

You shouldn't have any problems with cloning, it doesn't also matter if your HDD is not the boot one, it makes things even easier, in my opinion. :)

Since I am a WD representative, I can't detail non-WD software that freely, but you should be able to find a guide for the cloning program you are to be using. Instructions usually are not so complicated, you need the drive you're cloning from and the destination drive, you want to clone on. :)

Good luck!

CK_WD

1. Using the onetime bootmenu boot your computer with that pen drive with your source disk (your failing disk) and a destination disk (formatted empty disk of capacity not less than that of your source disk) plugged in.

2. You will get a bootmenu with "SystemRescueCD - default options"- already highlighted. Just press ENTER and wait for the booting process to continue.It will end up with the prompt
" root@sysreccd /root %"

3.Against the prompt type: fdisk -l and press enter. This will list all your four drives - your 500GB System drive, your 1TB failing source drive to be cloned, your new 2TB destination drive, as also your SystemRescueCD pendrive. Note the nomenclature of your failing 1TB source disk and 2TB destination disk.

Note: fdisk[Space]-l ( l for list. It is not 1.)

(Example: I wanted to clone my 30GB pendrive with data onto my new 750GB Seagate external HDD. My failing 30GB Source pendrive was listed as "Disk /dev/sdd 30.2GiB 32463912960 bytes 63406089 sectors." My destination drive as "Disk /dev/sde 698.7GiB 750156373504 bytes 1465149167 sectors." From the size I have determined that my source disk is sdd and destination disk is sde. In your case it could be different. Note down the correct nomenclature of your 1TB failing source disk and 2TB destination HDD)

4. Next against the command prompt type: ddrescue -d -f -r3 -v /dev/sdb /dev/sdc recovery.log

Press enter

Note:
1. ddrescue[space]-d[space]-f[space]-r3[space]-v[space]/dev/sdb[space]/dev/sdc[space]recovery.log

2.Replace sdb with the correct device nomenclature of your 1TB failing Source disk and sdc with the correct device nomenclature of your 2TB Destination drive as obtained in step 3.

( From the example I had given above, it will be in my case
ddrescue -d -f -r3 -v /dev/sdd /dev/sde recovery.log )

5. Sit back and relax. The cloning process may take hours to days depending upon how bad your Source disk is. If your data is important patience is the key and the wait worth it.

In the cloning process itself it will go through cloning all the good sectors first and then try to recover the bad sectors one by one trying it 3 times (r3 option) before giving up on it.

Note: For the duration of ddrescue run you will not be able to use your PC. Leave it alone. When it encounters difficult bad sectors your PC may appear to have frozen but it is not. Do not terminate ddrescue. Just wait. It may continue after sometime.

First run should be smooth as it clones only the good sectors.

Only the second and third pass where it tries to recover the data from the bad sectors will take time.

Even if ddrescue terminates during the second or third pass unable to deal with the worst bad sectors, inasmuch as the first pass has cloned all the good sectors, you should be able to see the data in good sectors.