[golden_ice]

My computer recently had a hard disk failure and I lost everything. At the time of the crash my 1TB WD external hard drive was still connected. although the data still exists on it, I can't access any of it. I tried playing some music I stored onto it with a Winamp playlist and the music plays; I'm quite sure there's hope for it.

some screenshots:

My broken computer may be broken, but since I stored everything on my external hard drive I really need to have it fixed. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[JimE]

Start with the sticky at the top of the page > http://www.techsupportforum.com/for...rtition-or-files-in-your-computer-194492.html

 

[golden_ice]

I followed the advice from this thread: http://www.techsupportforum.com/for...-hd-not-formatted-all-of-a-sudden-200538.html and I've managed to find a way to copy my invisible folders to another computer, but this takes too long. I'll gladly wait if nothing else works but I'd like to save the hard drive itself too.

The Repair MFT option doesn't work.

 

[JimE]

If the MFT can't be repaired, then the only option left is the data recovery. And yes, RAW data recovery is slow.

 

[golden_ice]

so does this mean my external hard drive is useless once I recover my files?

also, what are these icons?

they don't appear on any regular files.

 

[raptor_pa]

Recover the data to another disk, then format the drive and see if it is useable. It sounds like a filesystem failure which should be rebuilt after the format. Make sure your data is safe first however.

 

[golden_ice]

OK, so I just want to if there's a faster way to recover my data? does using a faster computer help? I have access to a more powerful computer. Will it speed up the recovery process?

 

[Jay_JWLH]

I believe I have come across this issue before. What has happened is that the last time the NTFS partition was accessed under windows it was not shut down cleanly. When I tried accessing a NTFS partition using Ubuntu, I just happened to face this issue. For safety, your computer won't properly mount the drive unless it was clean again, or just fails to properly recognise it as it should. You might be able to find a way to at least have read only access to the drive, or force it to mount again at the risk of losing data. I say this from a Ubuntu point of view though. If you want, you can run Ubuntu to force mount the drive, and then dismount it safely from there after updating it to accept NTFS partitions. I would recommend making a full bit-by-bit backup of your drive just in case though, using DriveImage XML.

Hopefully all of the files should be intact, and file recovery will be possible. Give GetDataBack a try. The trial version will at least give you a full idea of what you can recover. Then use Recuva as a free solution to recover the files. I had one other person who did actually go ahead and buy GetDataBack, with full success. There may be other file recovery alternatives out there that can work on full partition recovery.

 

[Jay_JWLH]

OK, so I just want to if there's a faster way to recover my data? does using a faster computer help? I have access to a more powerful computer. Will it speed up the recovery process?

I believe the speed of the drive would be the most likely bottleneck.

 

[JimE]

PC speed won't matter.