I am attempting to recover data from the hard drive of Toshiba Satellite L830. So far, no luck. I tried using the recovery booting option with the laptop it was installed in which resulted in black screen and a mouse pointer and nothing more. I hit F12 on startup to enter into the boot menu and it didn't even recognise that there was a hard drive installed however on the second attempt of this it did recognise that there was a drive but it made no difference. I removed the drive and using the base of a seagate external hard drive I had lying around that is independently powered and has a SATA connection I was able to view the drive on my PC in "This PC" (This port may in itself be the problem?). When I tried to view it it says, 'E:/ is not accessible - the device is not ready' (using Windows 10 btw). I ran chkdsk E: /f and chkdsk E: /r and it says the type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives. In device management it says, Volume - (F:) / Layout - Simple / Type - Basic / File System - RAW / Status - Healthy (Primary Partition) / Capacity - 284.1- GB / Free Space - 284.10 GB / % Free - 100%. I have tried using easeUS, DMDE and ZAR data recovery software without any success. I thought I may be onto something with ZAR however it can't see the drive at all even though I can see it in 'This PC'. I tried using gsmart control to view the SMART data with no success and Test Disk 7.0 to analyse the drive but it says Partition: Read error. Then during the quick search it says as (an example) Read error at 557055/0/1 (1ba = 557055) which it says for all sectors and never passes 00%. Any help here would be greatly appreciated as I feel as though I have exhausted my free options. Next step would be buying the correct SATA cable and power cable instead of using the one out of my seagate external however I feel as though since I have been able to do this much it probably isn't an issue with the cables. Then I guess I will have to take it to a professional or figure out how it is they would do it and if the cost of the tech required is less than the cost of paying a professional then perhaps buy what I need and do it myself. I forgot to mention that after following some troubleshooting tips online I changed the drive letter from E:/ to F:/ which is why you may notice above that I have used both. Sorry for the inconsistency there.
Cheers for any help here,
thisfatcat
message edited by thisfatcat
Slave it to another comp & run this. Lazesoft Data Recovery Home
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System...
http://www.lazesoft.com/download.html
Sorry, but what should I save to another comp? EDIT: sorry I misread that as save not slave. So If I understand correctly I need to attach the internal drive from the L830 to another PC and then run the data recovery tool on it?
message edited by thisfatcat
"So If I understand correctly I need to attach the internal drive from the L830 to another PC and then run the data recovery tool on it?"
Yep, data recovery is always done that way, otherwise you are overwriting data on the drive.
Another way, if you have another drive for the laptop with any operating system on it ( it has to have been installed in the laptop ) You can then slave the faulty drive to that.
How important is the data on that drive? If it is of value to you then it is highly advisable to make a bit-by-bit copy of the data to another drive then attempt recovery from that drive. Recovery programs are all very well but they are not perfect and using them can reduce the chance of subsequently recovering data from the drive.
If the data is really valuable, get a qualified recovery expert to do the work for you. It will be expensive, but is the most reliable option.
This is the reason that people keep independent backups of important data.
Here is another tool to try, if needed. MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System...
http://www.techsupportalert.com/bes...
http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/po...
http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/do...
Thanks. I have it connected to my PC through an external case. All of the stuff I mentioned above in my original post is stuff I have done on it with the hard drive removed from the L830 and connected to another PC. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. I'm not great with this stuff or the terminology that goes with it. Lazesoft gets stuck "loading disk information" when the drive is slaved and goes non-responsive. However when it is unplugged it quickly jumps to the next step but obviously only my C:/ drive can be seen.
The data is not important to me at all. I told a friend that I would have a look and do my best to recover the data to try and spare him the expense of having to have it professionally recovered and so that is what I am doing.
If MiniTool can't see the drive, here are other tools. Autopsy
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others...
http://www.sleuthkit.org/autopsy/de...Avira Rescue System
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivi...
http://www.avira.com/en/download/pr...
Documentation
User Manual - Avira Rescue System
http://www.avira.com/documents/prod...
HowTo - Avira Rescue System
http://www.avira.com/documents/prod...
The same comments apply, perhaps even more so. If the data is important to your friend then you don't want to do anything that destroys the chance of recovering it. message edited by ijack
Ok, so... I figure I will do this next in order to recover the data. 1. http://www.bootmed.com/bootmed/gett...
2. http://www.bootmed.com/bootmed/tuto...
Thank you both for your help! It's getting late here in AUS and I have been working on this for the better part of the day. I'm going to get back into it tomorrow and see how I go. I don't think that the data is particularly critical so if it sacrificed it won't be a huge loss. I will update on my progress tomorrow. Again, thanks for the help!
I agree with what ijack suggests about cloning the hard drive. Sounds like the drive may be damaged. Try working with testdisk further. Read all the tutorials for testdisk.
Your original post did not provide any background on how this drive became corrupted in the first place. Was power to the drive interrupted while the drive was being written to?
I'm here,
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclo...What I do know about this drive is that the guy who owns the laptop bought it as a returned item that was then refurbished. He said he started to experience errors such as it flashing between desktop and blue screen but it would eventually come good again. Then it started to drastically slow down until finally he wasn't able to boot any more. This is all I know regarding how it came to be trashed. I can try to get more info out of him and will post once I have.
I have tried running test disk again however it froze at about 1/3 of the way through the scan and now it won't perform the quick search any more. I am about to start researching cloning / making a bit-by-bit copy of the drive. Computing.net is asking me to select the best answer but as I have not resolved my issue yet, I won't be doing so until I have either resolved it or thrown in the towel in utter despair sobbing into my cat's ginger fur.
Did you try > MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition
"I have tried running test disk again however it froze at about 1/3 of the way through the scan and now it won't perform the quick search any more." Unfortunately, this may mean that the disk is now so damaged that recovery is next to impossible. The reason to take a bit copy of the disk to another one before you do anything else is twofold.
1. A failing disk is likely to deteriorate further each time it is powered up/accessed.
2. Changes made to the disk being recovered by less than perfect recovery software may corrupt it beyond all chance of retrieval.
@Johnw - I did not try minitool as I figured that since the other 3 programs I tried failed that another probably would not succeed and based on ijack's last post I am not going to attempt to try any more recovery tools. @ijack - Ended up having a pretty busy day and didn't get around to trying to clone the drive but that is what I am going to be doing now provided the drive is not completely ruined.
Well, why don’t you give a chance to Stellar Phoenix Software, I suggest you to give a shot to this software once and you’ll be able to resolve your issue very easily. Good Luck!!!
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