external HDD crash

[arash_hazeghi]

Does anyone have experience with recovering an 3TB SATA 7.2KRPM WD drive? This is wasn't a cheap drive (Cavier black). I can see the folders and the file names but when I try to open the CR2 files I get a read error (file corrupted!) there are 4 folders affected with 1/2 images in each folder corrupted randomly.

I have tried the obvious things like checkdisk and bad sector recovery unfortunately it does not help :(

[Bob Serling]

Hi Arash,

If you can see the files, there's a strong chance they are recoverable. Stop using the drive immediately. Any head movement could create further damage. Find a local service that can do a recovery. Some will even come to you. They'll know very quickly whether or not it can be recovered. If you have to send it to a full data recovery service - which uses clean room technology in the recovery process - it will be very expensive. But again, if you can see the directory with the file names, there's a very good chance the data can be recovered. Good luck! (mine was not recoverable :-(.

Bob Serling

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Arash,

If you can see the files, there's a strong chance they are recoverable. Stop using the drive immediately. Any head movement could create further damage. Find a local service that can do a recovery. Some will even come to you. They'll know very quickly whether or not it can be recovered. If you have to send it to a full data recovery service - which uses clean room technology in the recovery process - it will be very expensive. But again, if you can see the directory with the file names, there's a very good chance the data can be recovered. Good luck! (mine was not recoverable :-(.

Bob Serling

Thanks Bob, I have used a service like that before for lab data recovery. It came to $1500! Wanted to see if there are cheaper options preferably a software solution :)

[Bob Serling]

There is some software that purports to do recovery operations, but I knew my drive was beyond that point as I couldn't even boot my system. Obviously, you could google it, but it would be great if someone on the forum has actual experience. Of course, reviews help too. So if you can find a couple vendors, CNET and other reliable review sites could probably help you determine if their software actually works.

[Graeme Sheppard]

Try Photorec.
If that doesn't work, I doubt anything will be able to copy files to a new disk.

Most likely you'll find the files are still corrupt because data is missing, so what you need to find is actually a tool to repair CR2 files for your specific camera.

[Roger Clark]

Arash,
Have you tried running windows check disk multiple times? Is it one file or multiple files?

If you put the drive on a linux system with the "disk utility" program, ir will give you a detailed look at the problem. It is unlikely that the linux fsck would help, but you could try.

Do you have anotherr backup? I always have a minimum of 3 ackups. of my data. I recently returned from Africa and I have 6 backups of all my images plus they are all still oin the CF cards at the moment.

This thread should be moved to digital workflow.

Roger

[fabiobernardino]

Do you know Testdisk ?
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Did you get any bad sectors when running checkdisk ?
Do you have the filesystem corrupted or not ?

If you have the filesystem OK I would try Testdisk.
If you have a hardware failure, I would clone the drive and run Testdisk (or similar software) on the cloned drive.

Good luck !

[arash_hazeghi]

thanks everyone for suggestion, I used Seagte disk utility to recover the drive, some files are still corrupt and cannot be recovered but I got a number of them back. I will quarantine this HDD and put it away better software may be available in the future.