Recover Data from HD W/ Bad Sectors

I have a hard drive here that is not recognized by windows. I ran western digital tool and ran diagnostic test and it sees the drive but detects that it has bad sectors. If I run the WD tool to repair bad sectors those sectors will become unrecoverable. I would like to preserve as much data that is on the disk as it has important pictures that are irreplaceable. Is there a way to recover any data on this disk?

 

Update: Just went into disk management and it is seen there as unallocated space.

 

Desktop or laptop?

 

It's a external 3.5" sata WD Cavier green 500gb drive for my desktop.

 

So you attached it through a USB port and your desktop did not recognize the drive?
If so, your next option would be to boot a linux live CD and see if linux will mount the drive so you can grab the files you want.

 

Yes I have an adapter I first tried to attach it to and now I have it attached internally to my desktop. I did a little research and found a free tool called test disk which I ran, but it would not find any file system or partitions. I also ran Getdata back program with same results. I am starting to think this drive has some physical damage to it but I hear no clicking and it powers on fine and you can hear the read/write heads working. Will try to run linux live cd and see if that works.
Another question for you though, WD Data Lifeguard Tools says the drive has bad sectors after running diagnostic test, it says it can repair the bad sectors but it will make them unreadable.(I'm assuming it is just performing same functions fdisk would) My question is if I use that to repair it will then windows or recover data programs be able to read it and still get data off it?

 

I would not try to repair the bad hard drive.
The less you work with the bad drive, the greater your chances of not corrupting it more and getting data back. Supposes it makes the bad sectors unreadable and that's where parts of your data is located.
I'd fire up a linux CD and see what it shows you. Linux works better than windows to "see" things.

 

So I tried a linux live cd and it still will not recognize the drive. Not sure if this drive was hit with a virus or what but there is no partition or filesystem seen. I used test disk software to create disk image and I am able to mount image with passmark osf mount software. Is there any good recovery/forensic software out there that works well that will read this mounted image and ignores not having filesystem or partitions intact?

Things I have tried in order:
-Data Life Guard Diagnostics From western Digital- ran diagnostic scan and it detected bad sectors. gave me option to repair but warned if I did it would make those sectors unrecoverable. not knowing the extent of the damaged sectors I'm not willing to take that chance yet.

-UBCD/Linux- Looked under devices where drives are listed and did not see Western Digital drive.

-Get data Back for NTFS- sees drive and scans disk sectors, then when scan is finished it asked to select partition and none are shown.

-Testdisk- Failed to find any partition and reported bad sectors

-PhotoRec- Scanned and recovered about 100 gb worth of useless files. these files were mostly .txt files. and others had weird file extensions like .ogg, .gpg

-Testdisk- Ran again just to create disk image to proceed further with data recovery.

 

Update: Mounted image with Passmark OSF software and ran photorec again. All I get is a bunch of different files than what were on the drive. Lots of .txt and .html files. If the original files were over written by these random files am I just out of luck?

 

Hi,

I was just reading your thread and it occurred to me that some WD external drives use some sort of encryption which might be interfering with data recovery. Which model is your external?

Maybe put the drive back in its enclosure and then try testdisk again to see if it finds any partitions. Easeus also has a partition recovery software that might be worth a quick try although something seems to be seriously wrong with the drive.

Getdataback should have found something since I thought it ignored partitions but read the disk sector by sector.

PowerDataRecovery is another sector by sector data recovery software. It isn't free but older versions were so if the current demo works, we can probably find an older version.

 

Thanks for your help. Drive model: WD Cavier Green 500 Gb sata WD5000AADS .
I did not know that about WD drives. That seems to be part of what is going on here. .gpg file extension belongs to GNU Privacy Guard encryption/decryption program which is only a fraction of what is being recovered by photorec. The rest are .html,.txt,.pdf,.java and other file extensions I have never heard of.
I would put drive back in enclosure but I don't have it here, this is a friend's drive who is out of town who gave me this to work on. I do have a IDE/Sata to usb adapter will this be ok to use instead? Or can I just attach to sata port on my pc since it will be faster?
I will try testdisk again and other software you mentioned, it's pretty important to her so i am not willing to give up just yet. In the meantime you gave me an idea i think i'm gonna try to use Gnu software to decrypt one of the .gpg files I extracted and see if i can find anything readable.

Will post back with results.

 

The situation I was thinking of is described in this thread. It has to do with the circuit board in the external case encrypting the data on some MyBook models. When the HD is removed from the case there is no way to decrypt it because it doesn't have access to that board.

I don't know if this is your situation or if yours is possibly software encrypted. Or not encrypted at all, although since you matched up the file extensions and they refer to encryption, it is a good possibility and would explain why data recovery programs are not finding relevant files.

The HD model number isn't much help but the model on the external case might be useful to see what type of encryption you are dealing with and what others have found out about it.

I think before you waste much time trying to break encryption, you may want to wait and get the case and see if the drive is recognized when in the case and attached by USB.

 

She did mention that she purchased a new HD enclosure because he old one broke. The new enclosure worked fine at first but then windows kept not recognizing it. Does she need a special enclosure or will any sata enclosure work?

 

I may be leading you down the wrong path on the encryption. I was thinking hardware encryption where it would only work in the original enclosure. Since she said it worked in a new enclosure for a while that would seem to rule out hardware encryption tied to a particular board/enclosure. Perhaps it was never a MyBook but just a HD put in an enclosure by her originally.

Give Partition Wizard's Partition Recovery a try. I'm curious if it says the disk is bad. You can just connect it internally. Then run the recovery using Full Disk and Quick options and see if it lists any partitions. I doubt it will since TestDisk failed but I'd like to know for sure. It is possible the bad sectors are disrupting the partition table but I still would have thought GetDataBack could have found individual files even with a bad partition table.