WD External HDD not staying connected to diagnose

[RobinReeve]

I have a 3TB WD Green Hard drive. It was part of an external USB drive I used to back up data. I accidentally deleted the HDDD with a quick format on an iMac. That was in 2018... Since then I have not been able to undo or recover anything, but this is why:

The drive spins and starts with power while connected to the USB. The iMac (same machine) recognizes the drive after roughly 60-90 seconds. Then it displays the error "“The disk you inserted was not read by this computer.” and you have 3 choices.
1. Initialize - which seems to let the machine scan it a little, disk utility sees it, etc.
2. Ignore - Doesn't seem to do much, nothing can read it and the same error comes back in 60 seconds.
3. Eject - We know what that does.

So the drive has been connected and used Initialize many, many, many times to try and read the drive in 10 different recovery programs. All using a free scanning tools. Most find bad sectors. Same as Drive Utility finds.
*Doing that will say: Fixing Damaged Partition Map.. then Couldn't modify partition map. Operation failed.

So I have been at the mercy of software tools trying to scan a drive that drops it's connection every 90 seconds, but the drive spins free, runs every time it is connected without error. Something is prohibiting it from being accessed for extended period of times. I am trying to avoid sending this drive out to recover the data, and I feel I am smarter than this problem. But alas, this is where you all come in.

Be nice, I am tech-savvy, but not a programmer or anything.

 

[Jared]

Okay, first off there are some things you should know. Initialize means to create a new partition table, which you definitely DO NOT want to do (too late now). Since it's a mac formatted drive (and I assume was before the original format too) the HFS+ cabinet file is not totally gone. This is where all the file/folder structure metadata is stored, so you can forget about ever getting back normal folder structure or file names.

If it's asking to initialize over and over after you've already selected that option, then it means you've got a hardware failure in your drive. On the bright side, maybe the initialize never took and original partition can at least be salvaged.

In all likelihood you'll need professional recovery and all you'll likely get back is a raw recovery by file types. Meaning you'll just get back a lot of files that are nameless and sorted only by the type of file recognized. And that's after the hardware issues are addressed and data extracted onto a good drive.

 

[RobinReeve]

That does make sense, but your thinking that the millions of software out there for partition recovery, data loss like Stellar, EaseUs, Wondershare, etc, none of those would work?

So far the only software that has seemed to run for longer periods of time are DiskDrill and Remo Recover. DiskDrill does in fact find files, but never the ones I am looking for. Since I am looking for my wedding video, I know it is either a mp4 or mov file and I have to imagine is quite large. I keep getting "spotlightV100" or something in recovery, and it will have what appears to be a lot of system files, no pictures or videos.

Other software like WonderShare and EaseUs have found videos but smaller files I know are not it. Because it's a 3TB drive, it can take days or even weeks to scan through it all and eventually the drive disconnects and never gets to completion. I guess I'm trying to understand what might be wrong to be able to avoid the $500+ most places charge just to get me a file.

 

[Jared]

First off, those programs you mention are just good spammers who've shoved their names in your face. None of them are any good. R-Studio, R-Explorer, UFS Explorer, GetDataBack are the programs you should be looking at in that price range.

But, you shouldn't even for one second consider running any data recovery program directly against the failing HDD. That's a perfect recipe for losing the video FOREVER!!!

The first thing you need to do is to clone the drive onto a good drive. For that you should be using ddrescue or hddsuperclone. I have a tutorial about using ddrescue for this here: how-to-clone-a-hard-drive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html

Only after you have a sector by sector clone should you run scans and that's against the good drive, not the bad one.

 

[RobinReeve]

Okay, to clone the drive I assume I need another 3TD drive or can I use something different? I will read the article and that makes total sense, I think the issue with cloning is the same as trying to recover it. If it only recognizes the drive for short burst of time, i'm not sure how a cloner would work any better.

 

[RobinReeve]

UPDATE: I learned one of the issues!
The "adapter" the External HDD was attached to was the culprit for disconnecting and reconnecting, so I used another and it is running the scan from DiskDrill recovery. It is hopefully not ruining anything, but a quick check in Disk Utility on the Mac, the drive showed no corruption errors or bad sectors, so who knew?!

Since I have "initialized" the drive through that bad connection, perhaps it did not lose all the data. So is there any recovery software recommended that I could try to dig into a quick formatted HDD to recover a large video file? At least knowing I dont have a hardware problem now?

 

[Jared]

R-Studio or UFS Explorer

 

[oliveryuan]

If you can see the external drive in Disk Utility, it indicates that the drive is not physically damaged. Please don't worry.

 

[oliveryuan]

If you can see the external drive in Disk Utility, it indicates the disk is not physically damaged. Don't worry!
Please don't click initialize to format the disk. This operation will overwrite the original data and make data recovery impossible. I suggest you go with [glow=red]SPAM[/glow] Data Recovery for Mac. I have experiences with this software and restore 70% of lost data with the deep scan mode. Maybe you can have a try. But if the disk is seriously corrupted, the software won't show the original file directory and file names. You have to spend a lot of time to find the right files. Good luck!

I hope this will work for you.

 

[Jared]

[post]16202[/post] If you can see the external drive in Disk Utility, it indicates the disk is not physically damaged. Don't worry!

The fact that you think this, just confirms why your software is so bad. You have ZERO understanding of data recovery. Don't attempt to SPAM our forum again with your trash software and stupid remarks that are outright wrong.