Partition recovery on an external drive

A friend of mine gave me a My Book Elite that suddenly refused to boot up for him and I'm trying to see if I can get his data back. I managed to get the drive out of the housing, where it registered immediately after I connected it via HDD dock. The only problem: no partitions.

I was able to use EaseUS to restore what looks like the content of the drive (mostly a series of large video files), but I can't seem to open any of the files. Specifically, the video files are showing as what seems like the right size, but when I try to play them, I get an error message or a long list of seemingly random letters and numbers in pairs depending on the player.

In spite of the partition loss and the external drive chassis not working, it seems like the drive is error-free based on the scans I've run. Is there some other step to data recovery that I'm missing out on? Would it be better at this point to see about getting a quote from a data recovery specialist?

Many/most video files will not play properly even if there's only a small amount of corruption in the original file which is an easy thing to have happened under those circumstances. I've found VLC player to be more tolerant of corrupt video files than other players so you could try that if you haven't already.

You could also run Recuva to see if it can find any more files on the drive. It may see some that Easus did not. https://www.piriform.com/recuva It also has an option to scan for non-deleted files on corrupted disks.

Data recovery specialists are expensive but if the data lost is important it's an option.

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it seems like the drive is error-free based on the scans I've run.

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What scans did you run? WD hard drive diags?

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the content of the drive (mostly a series of large video files), but I can't seem to open any of the files.

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What video player did you use? If it was Windows Media Player, you might not have the proper codecs. Like fink suggested, VLC will play just about any type of video file.
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Make sure your friend knows that putting files on an external drive is NOT a backup. You should always have at least 2 copies of your data in different locations. The more copies, the better.

For playing the video files, I've tried VLC, Media Player Classic, and KMPlayer, but no go.

As far as scans, I've just run a sector scan that ran alongside the partition recovery for another program called Active Partition Recovery (didn't own that one, so all I could do was the scan).


I took it to a data recovery firm and they gave me an estimate of about $1200. They also mentioned that certain WD external drives use the adapter that connects the drive itself to power/USB to decrypt data on the drive. Is this true (the bill mentioned that the data on the drive was encrypted and that it had corrupt reserve tracks), and if so, can you just swap in another one of those adapters from a different My Book if the one you have breaks?

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I managed to get the drive out of the housing, where it registered immediately after I connected it via HDD dock.

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I heard the laptop/portable drives have a proprietary connector. As you found out desktop drives work on SATA connectors. I'm not sure about the very latest models, but that's been my experience. I don't think it would encrypt by default. You wouldn't be able to even list the files if that was the case.

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As far as scans, I've just run a sector scan that ran alongside the partition recovery for another program called Active Partition Recovery (didn't own that one, so all I could do was the scan).

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I would have run the manufacturer's diags, but I think you'd want to get the data off first.

Testdisk is a good freebie partition recovery tool, but you're already past that point if you can see the partition. It's also on UBCD.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Did you try copying a file to a different drive and then playing it? If it still doesn't play, then it might just be corrupted.

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Originally Posted by Midknyte

Did you try copying a file to a different drive and then playing it? If it still doesn't play, then it might just be corrupted.

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The recovery in EaseUS put the files on a new external HDD, but it wouldn't run there, nor would it run when I copied one of the video files to my local drive.

Encrypted or otherwise, though, it seems like I'll still have to go with data recovery as it looks like there's definitely some sort of corruption in the files I was able to restore. Not ALL of them; it recovered a number of images/text files that come on the drive to tell you about all its wonderful features. I emailed the data recovery folks to ask them if bringing in that adapter would help/lower the labor costs, but I didn't get the estimate until after hours, so it'll likely be Monday before they get back to me.

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I was able to use EaseUS to restore what looks like the content of the drive

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Ah ok. I thought you just restored the MBR to show the partition. You meant a file recovery to a second drive.

If that's the case, the drive is not encrypted. You wouldn't have been able to pull off any data if it was.

Hard lesson to learn, but that's why you always have multiple copies of important files. Even if you pay for the service, there is no guarantee they will recover/restore all the files.

And use Safely Remove when disconnecting a USB drive. That will scramble them like if it is not used.

Also, when a hard drive is spinning, the heads are flying on a cushion of air that is less than 1/20th the thickness of a human hair. So, IF a drive is jarred while spinning, the heads touch the platters and whatever data was under these scrapes is now gone forever. You also now have tiny little bits and pieces of metal flying around in the drive bouncing across the platters, banging into the heads and causing even more damage. :(

I'm not sure what happened with his drive. From what he tells me, it was working just fine, then he put it in the storage, and when he got it back out some months later, it was broken. if I had to guess, I would say it was probably jarred some time in that period.

In any case, he will be definitely be learning the lesson that moving your data from one place to another is not the same as a backup.

Tough lesson to learn. Been there ... :(