Lost data, got most of it back

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Yesterday I did something really stupid, but fortunately I was able to correct it…for the most part.

Recently I had an opportunity to purchase and install a couple of new drives to replace the older ones that
either indicated pending failure through SMART, or that I had accidently broken part of the SATA port on the one drive.
(I performed a whole new build recently and updating some of the drives made good sense)
The drive where I accidently broke part of the SATA connector wasn’t the stupid I’m referring to here, that drive still works,
but keeping it as a viable working drive would be unacceptable and I had previously taken measures to get the data it contained off.

No, the stupidity came later when it came time to format the drive; I formatted the wrong one.
I have 8 drives in total on this system and I should have been paying closer attention to what I was doing. I should know better.
This has happened to me before, albeit not on such a scale, and it’ll most likely happen again at some point in the future.

I formatted a drive that contained 1.81TB worth of video organized in very specific archival folder structures.
Fortunately performing a drive format does not mean that everything is hopelessly gone.

Real World Review:

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard 7.5 is what I used to get it back and I’ve been using the paid version for around 8 months or so since
I needed to successfully get some photos I had also accidentally formatted from a camera flash card.
I don’t recall exactly what I had paid for it but I know it was somewhere around the 60 dollar range.

Needless to say EaseUS was able to retrieve ALL of the videos, but the surprise here was that it also managed to get about 90% of my
folder structure as well. That was a surprise to me as I thought that I would have to rebuild all those folders again from scratch.
I don’t know how common it is to retrieve Windows explorer folder structure from a recovery program, but
recovering the hidden “System Volume Information” when selecting recovery options for the drive may have been the answer to that.
*Anyone else with more experience with recovery is more than welcome to comment on retrieving folder structure type data.

The down side was that approx. 5% of the video retrieved had lost it’s name information, so I’ve got some work ahead of me.
The recovery took about 8 to 10 hours to complete, as this was a huge amount of video on a 3TB drive to loose.
I’m confident that I’ll end up putting things back near to what I had before, but it’ll still take a bit of work.
I did manage to create a listing of all files on the drive with the free JDirPrinter by Spadix, I did that some time ago, hopefully it’s not too old.

In conclusion I can say that the above software works, albeit with a few caveats, but overall I’m satisfied with it.
I guess the take-away from all this is:
Have the needed recovery program on hand before SHTF, and possibly test it at least once before hand and have a plan
for it’s possible usage, as I’m sure JDirPrinter will be of some help in the coming days.

Thanks for viewing
CLiNT

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Replies

They’ll make anyone a Super Moderator these days…

cheers, Paul

p.s. I notice your posts tend to have line breaks in strange places. Do you write your replies in something and then transfer them to your browser?

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p.s. I notice your posts tend to have line breaks in strange places. Do you write your replies in something and then transfer them to your browser?

Yeah, sometimes I do.

They’ll make anyone a Super Moderator these days…

That certainly appears to be true.

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Thanks for the review Clint. I’ve made that mistake in the past as well. (Maybe that’s a Super Moderator requirement?? :rolleyes:) Nice to hear you were largely successful in your recovery.

Jerry

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I Did Something REALLY Stupid, but…

Welcome to the Club!!
Dues are due daily .
Glad you got it mostly back. Thanks for the Feedback on EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard 7.5 and JDirPrinter .

[/SIZE]

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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CLiNT,

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
John Powell

:cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I don’t know who said it first, but it’s kinda become my mantra—”Any file that you don’t have at least two copies of is a file you don’t really want to keep.”

I have only 5 drives on my new build, 4 1TB and 1 2TB. The 2TB and two of the 1TB drives are dedicated to drive/partition images. I also have a NAS with two interchangeable 3TB drive cartridges, and another desktop with a SSD and a 1TB data drive. I keep multiple images of all my partitions, full drive images of my working drives, plus duplicates of my working partitions/data partitions on separate drives/PC’s. My financial data is also on USB sticks and DVD’s.

I haven’t actually formatted a drive in a long, long time, other than a single partition drive as a target for drive images. Restoring a full drive image to a replacement drive takes care of all of that in one fell swoop. But I did indeed format the wrong drive a few years ago. I think the good Lord was looking over my shoulder, because I realized what I had done before I proceeded further. I had formatted the drive using BootIt Next Generation, and one of the options available is Unformat. I applied that option, and the drive was restored to its former self in full.

On occasion I will format a USB stick with Windows, but for a hard disk drive, I boot into BootIt Bare Metal to do my formatting/partitioning. I never touch a hard drive with Windows tools, other than for information as in Disk Management. Those quotations in my signature (as well as my own quote in red) mean something very personal to me; I’ve got a story for each one.

Glad you got it sorted out CLiNT, and thanks for posting.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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I have 8 drives in total on this system

I have only 5 drives on my new build

I am curious about this. I was under the impression only 4 drives can be on a computer. Anyone care to explain???
Giving clear details on how to recover from a disaster is always honorable IMHO.
Michael

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I am curious about this. I was under the impression only 4 drives can be on a computer. Anyone care to explain???
Giving clear details on how to recover from a disaster is always honorable IMHO.
Michael

The number of installed drives depends on the number of drives that the motherboard will support, that is, the number of SATA connectors that are available. Even this can usually be overcome by installing a PCI express expansion card with SATA connectors. In the days of IDE hard drive connectors, one was usually limited to two primary and two secondary hard drives for a total of 4. But even that could be gotten around using an SCSI PCI expansion card.

My motherboard has 5 SATA connectors plus an mSATA connector. I used an mSATA to SATA adapter card in the mSATA connector to give me a 6th SATA connector. My CD/DVD drive is connected through that one, so I actually have 6 “drives”.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Michael,

I think what you are referring to is 4 Primary Partitions on a MBR formatted disk. You can have as many physical drives as your hardware will support! Of course if you exceed 26 you’ll have to do some fancy footwork to get around the drive letter limitation. HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Michael,

I think what you are referring to is 4 Primary Partitions on a MBR formatted disk. You can have as many physical drives as your hardware will support! Of course if you exceed 26 you’ll have to do some fancy footwork to get around the drive letter limitation. HTH :cheers:

The alphabet can be exceeded with partitions/logical drives.:flee:

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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The alphabet can be exceeded with partitions/logical drives.

I’ll bite. How does that work in Windows?

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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I’ll bite. How does that work in Windows?

If one is using MBR, 4 primary partitions is the limit. However, one can create one Primary Partition, using part of the hard drive space, and then created an Extended Partition using the rest of the drive space. Within the Extended Partition, one create very many logical drives; there may be some limit (I don’t know what that might be), but you can get way beyond 26.

If one is using GPT, one can create up to 128 Primary Partitions.

And you can use RG’s example to dodge the alphabet limit.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Wavy,

It’s all right here. HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Hey Y’all,

Here’s how it’s done.

First I created a 1Gb partition and did not assign it a drive letter.
39070-NODLPartition
Confirm in Disk Management that there is no drive letter.
39071-Confirm-Mount
Use Disk management to mount the partition.
39072-EstMountPoint
This is how it looks in File Explorer
39073-IE-MountPoint

HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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It works! Even in XP. Amazing the things you just don’t notice, or did I forget ?

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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The number of installed drives depends on the number of drives that the motherboard will support, that is, the number of SATA connectors that are available.

Thats great. I never looked at my newer sata computer since it replaced the old IDE that burned up.
The next question would be–How do you fit 5 drives inside your computer. better yet, how does Clint fit 8 drives in his. I am also curious if 5 drives causes a decrease in speed of all??

It’s all right here. HTH

Iv’e read some reports claiming that speed decrease is noticeable in this one. Never tried it myself. Any comment??
Michael

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Thats great. I never looked at my newer sata computer since it replaced the old IDE that burned up.
The next question would be–How do you fit 5 drives inside your computer. better yet, how does Clint fit 8 drives in his. I am also curious if 5 drives causes a decrease in speed of all??[/quote]
You need a case that can accommodate that number of drives. I still have 3 open bays even with an optical drive and 5 hard drives installed. As for a decrease in speed, there is a maximum throughput via the SATA interface which all drives share, but there is not a likely scenario where data is being requested from all drives at once. I haven’t noticed any decrease. It would probably require benchmarking software and some serious stress to show whether there is any actual decrease with that many drives.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

Thats great. I never looked at my newer sata computer since it replaced the old IDE that burned up.
The next question would be–How do you fit 5 drives inside your computer. better yet, how does Clint fit 8 drives in his. I am also curious if 5 drives causes a decrease in speed of all??

Iv’e read some reports claiming that speed decrease is noticeable in this one. Never tried it myself. Any comment??
Michael

@Michael;

As others have said, there’s no problem having many more physical drives (not to mention all the logical ones) in a modern computer.

Here’s a link to an overview of my most recent rig’s “unboxing”: Digital Storm “Slade”.

It’s the Corsair Obsidian 550D case, which I chose specifically because of its roominess (21x20x9) and low noise. It’s built with bays for 6 standard HDD (3.5″), and 4 Optical (5.25″) drives. The default ASUS Z97-C m/b has (8) SATA connectors.

I only have 5 drives in at the the moment, but that’ll change as soon as 1TB SSDs drop below US$250!

–Thandal

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And you can use RG’s example to dodge the alphabet limit.

It was the Zs coming at me I was confused about. I was never tempted to even try 4 primary partitions, extended have always sufficed. Some applications may have needed their own primary but I have never encountered one.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Michael,

With a modern computer I doubt you’d notice. One thing you need to remember when searching the internet is to check the date the data was posted and what OS version. The Internet is like an Elephant…it never forgets! Often the results for searches are so out dated you can get a very skewed idea of how things work now. HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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The next question would be–How do you fit 5 drives inside your computer. better yet, how does Clint fit 8 drives in his. I am also curious if 5 drives causes a decrease in speed of all??

I elected to go with the MountainMods U2-UFO case for a couple of reasons:
1. It’s got lots of space to work in: (18inch x 18 inch cube).
(No matter what you do, with 7 drives, cable management is going to suck, so they get tucked to lower part of the case).
2. I selected a motherboard tray that is horizontally mounted, instead of vertical. (my preference)
3. You can place as many drives as you have fan hole mounts.

Check out the above link and you’ll see what I mean.
I figure it’s the last case I’ll ever need to own.

As far as the speed question:
1. You don’t need a lot of speed for large TB drives that the majority of their usage will be read only.
(that means minimal wear/tear and greater longevity).
2. The SSDs do all the heavy work, who’s read and writes are considerably faster than mech drives.
3. You’re never going to use all your SATA controllers at once, never.

I need a computer that can act as a media PC, a reliable workstation, and an enthusiast type computer where
I can safely and reliably overclock some things but not others.
Most of my drives are large TB drives, (1 2TB, 2 3TB, and 2 4TB drives) and their primary usage is storage.
Out of the 3 other SSD drives, the Plextor M.2 is my main OS drive. I also have two SATA 3.0 SSD drives that
I use exclusively for video creation and photo manipulation. Once the jobs are complete, the drives are empty.
They are also potential backup drives where I can restore images to in case my main OS drive goes down.

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CLiNT,

That’s some case! Did you get “WOPR” etched into one of the panels?
If I might ask where did you get the mortgage for it?

Seriously, how about some pics of that babe in action? :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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CLiNT,

That’s some case! Did you get “WOPR” etched into one of the panels?
If I might ask where did you get the mortgage for it?

Seriously, how about some pics of that babe in action? :cheers:

Hell no, that would have add a few hundred dollar to the mix.
Here’s a pic of it naked:
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
If I can get the board I want in the coming months, I’ll go over the build in more detail in a separate thread.
The ASUS X99 Deluxe board I’m using right now was supposed to be my backup motherboard. What I really wanted was the ASUS X99 E WS.

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Is that sink in the picture USB attached?

I’m not a moderator. It seems like it is a must to be one to wipe out your drive? Just kidding.

K

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CLiNT
Yeah small sink, is that why you use the dishwasher to clean your motherboard?

Sorry. Just couldn’t hep my self. It is the ultimate case! I have trouble finding space in my condo I can’t imagine that case in a Winnebago. I think my next computer may have to be a NUC, or shudder I need to do some house keeping…
Come to think of it my Raspberry Pi was my next computer and it is about NUC sized.

Looking forward to build photos.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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CLiNT,

That’s some case! Did you get “WOPR” etched into one of the panels?
If I might ask where did you get the mortgage for it?

Seriously, how about some pics of that babe in action? :cheers:

WOPR was also the acronym for “Woody’s Office Power Pack” for Microsoft Office XP years ago. I still have the zip files, but unfortunately I misplaced the passwords a good while ago,, so they are just resting in the software archive on my ReadyNAS drive.

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Is it next to the sink in case it overheats? :innocent:

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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CLiNT,

With a $300 case a $500 MB and I’d assume a $500+ (i-7) processor and from reading the MB specs I’d assume SLI/CrossFire video cards it’s looks like you’ll need that mortgage!

Thanks for the pic. Looking forward to the full build story & pics. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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That’s some case!

+1 on that one.

Thanks for the pic. Looking forward to the full build story & pics

+5 on the story.
Michael

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Is it next to the sink in case it overheats?

No. I live in my 26 foot travel trailer where space is at a premium.
It’s also next to the sink because I just washed all the dust out.

CLiNT,
With a $300 case a $500 MB and I’d assume a $500+ (i-7) processor and from reading the MB specs I’d assume SLI/CrossFire video cards it’s looks like you’ll need that mortgage!
Thanks for the pic. Looking forward to the full build story & pics.

No mortgage, but I did budget for it. The case actually cost me around 600.00 custom built.
I got the case about a year ago and rebuilt my old X58 system into it. I was fully anticipating
a future X99 chipset build, so the 4 grand that went into it was “saved up” the old fashion way.
One of the problems on the case side of things was that I didn’t anticipate a radiator 120mm x 2 size, so I have to
get a replacement side panel that can accommodate the new radiator. It’ll run about 80 dollars.
I’m probably on the very edge of deciding whether full liquid cooling is worth it over these closed unit cooler that are on the market these days.

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I’m probably on the very edge of deciding whether full liquid cooling is worth it over these closed unit cooler that are on the market these days.

Just go to Home Depot and get a small window A/C to hang off one of the sides.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Just to note, the JDirPrinter page lists XP as the latest Windows version for which it is compatible.
I have not tried it on Win 7, 8 or 8.1.

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Back in the day, say mid to late 80’s, I ran a customer support unit just at the dawn of PCs coming into the office space. Too often these newbies (which we all were really) would format or erase floppy disks (which were actually floppy) with important data. A couple of times even those impossibly huge 10 MB hard drives (connected into IBM PCs via a ribbon cable from the HD box sitting on top of the PC) would get “the treatment.” What a wonder was the MACE software. I got MACE for all my visiting support folks and they did magic to save the day, or week, or month even.

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I am NOT a Super Moderator, so I have never formatted the wrong drive.

But, I have a Question.

Are all of the drives you all mentioned “Internal” Drives?

If yes, could not a fire or another disaster wipe them all out in 1 fell swoop?

Would not using some “External” Drives that are daily removed & stored in another location be more secure?

I am fortunate to have my 2nd location only 50′ away in my house.
I work in a separate building in my back yard.

So, a fire at 1 location would not destroy the drives at the 2nd location.

I do live in a Hurricane prone area, so a Hurricane could destroy both locations.
But, I still have a slight chance that 1 or the other would not be totally destroyed.

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The basic answer is that any drive with my data on it has a copy or, better, a back up. And a copy of the backup is in a safe deposit box 20 miles inland from my house near the Gulf Coast in Florida. Until a few years ago I kept them in a bank even nearer to the water than my house which finally got me thinking.
What systems do I have?
I have two PCs, both running WIN 7 Pro x64 with 32 GB of RAM. They are married via an IOGEAR KVM switch to two high def 9×16 monitors. Through the switch I can instantly jump from one PC to the other while one or both is/are chunking away on their own thing. Through the home network, they share a printer and a scanner, plus I have mapped certain folders on each machine to share with the other, meaning I don’t have to do anything fancy to get data to and from.
One PC has four physical hard drives plus two SSDs (one for C: and one for D: which contains database catalogs via a Marvel controller). The other has two hard drives plus a boot SSD. Each machine has one external drive and one BlackX station, each station has space for two HDs. Makes it real easy to just get one naked drive into the safe deposit box from each macine. Then there are two NASes for presence on-line. And the other odd bits and pieces. I use Acronis for backups and images.

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It’s interesting to see what other people do with their PC setups. Mine is different to LinusF3.

I have 3 PCs in the house (plus a couple of tablets and nooks). The house is wired with CAT, the router is a WD MyNet900 with 7 RJ45v ports and I have a 16 port HP Procurve switch in the wiring closet.

One desktop is Win7/64. 2nd desktop (the wife’s) is running Win8.1/64 but with ClassicShell (as I dislike the basics of Win8). The laptop is running Win8.1/64 (also with ClassicShell).

I run an HP EX495 server with two 1TB drives in it. Drive Extender runs on the server and duplicates each file across the two physical drives. The server backs up the 3 PCs every day. I backup the server to an ESATA 2Tb Fantom drive every 2 weeks and keep multiple dated copies there. I also put a separate HD into the server once per month and backup the server data files to that HD. That HD is rotated on a father/son basis and kept offsite at my son’s office about 4 miles away.

I would be interested in seeing what others do also.

Kevin

The basic answer is that any drive with my data on it has a copy or, better, a back up. And a copy of the backup is in a safe deposit box 20 miles inland from my house near the Gulf Coast in Florida. Until a few years ago I kept them in a bank even nearer to the water than my house which finally got me thinking.
What systems do I have?
I have two PCs, both running WIN 7 Pro x64 with 32 GB of RAM. They are married via an IOGEAR KVM switch to two high def 9×16 monitors. Through the switch I can instantly jump from one PC to the other while one or both is/are chunking away on their own thing. Through the home network, they share a printer and a scanner, plus I have mapped certain folders on each machine to share with the other, meaning I don’t have to do anything fancy to get data to and from.
One PC has four physical hard drives plus two SSDs (one for C: and one for D: which contains database catalogs via a Marvel controller). The other has two hard drives plus a boot SSD. Each machine has one external drive and one BlackX station, each station has space for two HDs. Makes it real easy to just get one naked drive into the safe deposit box from each macine. Then there are two NASes for presence on-line. And the other odd bits and pieces. I use Acronis for backups and images.

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Yes, they are ALL internal drives, and yes, I also have external drives, and DVD disks stored off site.

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I keep my backup disk in a cheap fireproof safe away from the PC. Should be enough to recover from the worst case scenario.

cheers, Paul

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Are there any non-mechanical precautions that might make recovery easier and loss less likely? I am thinking of such things as limiting path lengths, defragmenting drives with something like MyDefrag, and running surface scans, most of which can be scheduled.

I guess the argument against it is that, like wiping free space, data loss is unpredictable, and you may be messing up the very stuff you may want to recover. The one exception is a surface scan, which will keep your little magnets happy.

On the other hand, if you scheduled them to run immediately after a backup (by which I mean of the drive itself, which may be unlikely for a pure storage drive), or on a duplicate machine if you have one, they might make data easier to find and keep related data in the same territory.

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Modern hard disks are self managing and do not require surface scans.
Defragmenting the drive does nothing to save data, but it may help if you are attempting to recover from a format.
Ultimately nothing will prevent data loss if you don’t have a current backup.

Moral: http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//166074-Back-up-back-up-back-up

cheers, Paul

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Modern hard disks are self managing and do not require surface scans.[/quote]
I’m not so sure about that statement. Seagate provides some of the better software out there for their modern disks called SeaTools, for Seagate and Maxtor drives. Here’s a quote from the SeaTools for Windows Guide: (opens a .pdf file)

“IMPORTANT: If bad sectors (LBAs) are detected during the Short Drive Self Test (DST), then the diagnostic will halt with a FAIL status and issue a SeaTools Test Code. (see section G. below) If you are testing an internal PATA (IDE) or SATA disk drive, in this case, we recommend that you run the Long Test in the bootable version, SeaTools for DOS, which has the ability to repair sectors in most cases.”

Mechanically, there is no way for a hard drive to “know” that there are bad sectors on the disk without doing a surface scan. While there are indeed diagnostic tools built into the firmware of Seagate and Maxtor drives (and no doubt, other manufacturers as well), they are only put into play by SeaTools for Windows (or DOS).

Defragmenting the drive does nothing to save data, but it may help if you are attempting to recover from a format.

If a drive has been formatted in error, the only tool that should be used is data recovery software, and that should be run as soon as the error is realized.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Modern hard disk check sectors on the fly and use an internal reallocation scheme for bad sectors. Once the disk runs out of internal reallocation sectors the disk returns bad sector errors to the OS – you can check for internal reallocation with a SMART utility like CrystalDiskInfo. Running a surface scan may find bad sectors, but the disk will reallocate them internally, so your external scan will return no errors. To monitor disk health you need a SMART monitor, not external scanning tools.

cheers, Paul

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Modern hard disk check sectors on the fly and use an internal reallocation scheme for bad sectors. Once the disk runs out of internal reallocation sectors the disk returns bad sector errors to the OS – you can check for internal reallocation with a SMART utility like CrystalDiskInfo. Running a surface scan may find bad sectors, but the disk will reallocate them internally, so your external scan will return no errors. To monitor disk health you need a SMART monitor, not external scanning tools.

cheers, Paul

I’m sorry, but that is not the case. The hardware and firmware do not work that way. I’ve had SMART enabled on all drives since the manufacturers came out with the technology. I’ve had failing drives with everything OK as far as SMART was concerned. I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but it is incorrect. The drive discussed in this thread had no indications of problems from SMART. SeaTools has as an option a SMART check. That drive passed the SMART check.

In the course of normal disk activities, modern hard disks will deal with bad sectors if they run across them. However, modern hard disks do not run autonomous full drive scans to check for bad sectors everywhere on the disk and reallocate. And a full drive scan is the only way the read/write head would be able to locate all bad sectors. Seagate recommends using their SeaTools before returning a drive for warranty replacement, as their software often restores the drive to full use by doing a full drive scan, finding/marking bad sectors and reallocating with known good sectors. The drives can’t do that in normal use, else there would be no need for SeaTools in the first place.

In addition to that, if a drive under warranty fails the SeaTools tests, SeaTools will produce a link to Seagate Support, where one can initiate a warranty replacement, get an RMA issued and a confirmation email from Seagate.

Chkdsk /r will always be one of my Go-To tools wherever hard drive issues rear their ugly heads, with SeaTools as confirmation.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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You could probably go either way in your monitoring and you’d both be right.

Using the drive’s specific monitoring tools along with SMART monitoring tools, like CrystalDiskInfo, is the right way to go.
I’ve had CrystalDiskInfo’s SMART data telling me the drive’s bad sector count was consistently increasing over months, but
the drives specific diagnostics (WD in this instance) telling me everything was OK.
The drive is still working without any noticeable issue, but nonetheless, I’ve taken it out of the system and I’m now using it
as an externally accessed drive for tertiary mirrored storage.

Using Chkdsk /r continues to be something I use about every 6 months or so too.
Any large internal drive used for storage can easily be dismounted for the time it takes to run a lengthy check disk.

As far as me formatting the wrong drive, what I’d really like more info on is….

the surprise here was that it also managed to get about 90% of my
folder structure as well. That was a surprise to me as I thought that I would have to rebuild all those folders again from scratch.
I don’t know how common it is to retrieve Windows explorer folder structure from a recovery program, but
recovering the hidden “System Volume Information” when selecting recovery options for the drive may have been the answer to that.
*Anyone else with more experience with recovery is more than welcome to comment on retrieving folder structure type data[/COLOR].

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1. Be careful where you get your CrystalDisk – I got an atrocious version of Conduit malware the last time I downloaded it from the author’s own site

2. I usually just use a surface scan from within a utility like MiniTool Partition Wizard, and if there are any bad sectors, or any delays from struggles with sectors, then I re-scan it (max three passes before I get worried). This, I should add, is for everyday use with everyday computers, not the monsters the thread is about, and a surface scan is quite rare, but it has won the day more than once.

3. As heat sinks go, that’s a goodie.

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Yesterday I did something really stupid, but fortunately I was able to correct it…for the most part.

I don’t know how common it is to retrieve Windows explorer folder structure from a recovery program, but
recovering the hidden “System Volume Information” when selecting recovery options for the drive may have been the answer to that.
*Anyone else with more experience with recovery is more than welcome to comment on retrieving folder structure type data.

CLiNT

Here is a link to get started.

The linked article is coy about files on disks that have been overwritten, but they can most certainly be read by the sort of experts referred to in the title. That is why there are so many algorithms and counts of overwriting drives to make data difficult to retrieve, and why physical destruction is the relatively secure way of getting rid of an unwanted drive.

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Shall we have a “Stupid” contest? Once, back in the 90’s I deleted my wife’s 300,000 word novel.

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So, you restored it from a backup, right?

Are you still married to the same woman?

LOL

Shall we have a “Stupid” contest? Once, back in the 90’s I deleted my wife’s 300,000 word novel.

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If it gets fixed (recovered) the wife need not ever know about it.

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Great review and try-out of EaseUS Data Recovery, but your predicament left me confused and puzzled. Can’t figure out why you didn’t simply recover your data from your backups? You do after all advocate that people “Invest a little time and energy in a well thought out BACKUP regimen and you will have minimal down time, and headache.”:confused:

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Great review and try-out of EaseUS Data Recovery, but your predicament left me confused and puzzled. Can’t figure out why you didn’t simply recover your data from your backups? You do after all advocate that people “Invest a little time and energy in a well thought out BACKUP regimen and you will have minimal down time, and headache.”:confused:

…Like plugging in my (non existent) massive external array that has 4 or 5 Tbs worth of (not exactly) mission critical video?

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