Unable To Access Hard Drive ( Corrupt)?

Looks like something ''happened'' to my hard drive and it may be corrupt

My main concern is the data that is probably lost as some things like personal pictures and videos can never be recovered again.

This is an internal hard drive 3TB from western digital model: WD30EZRX
Computer it was has windows 7 64 bit home premium
I also took out the hard drive from the desktop loaded it on my inateck dock so my laptop could try to read it and i still have same issue i get an error :

x:/ is not accesible

file or directory is corrupted


I ran dischk and it says its trying to fix a corrupt directory but never does
Before this happened i saw a black screen ( about 2 months ago ) once or twice that it found something wrong with this hard drive when the pc booted which it fixed on its own at the time. On both times i scanned and check the hard drive with software for any bad sectors etc.. and everything came clean.

The 2nd time this happened i should have backed up my files but i am a moron.
Then last week it happened again for the 3rd time and this time i could not access the files nor was windows successful in fixing the issue. This sunday my pc was still showing the hard drive as NTFS and it actually showed almost 1 TB free of the 3TB but i could not access the drive at all due to the error i noted above.

Today i let the computer try to fix the errors but it didn't appear to fix anything even though it ran the dskchk for like 6 hrs . Now the hard drive doesn't even show up on my desktop and when i go into disk management it no longer shows up as NTFS and instead it shows up as ''raw''


The later concerns me because the files are really important to me and there is A LOT of files . I have avoided doing too much of anything at the moment because of fears that i may delete data that could still be salavged.

I don't care much about the hard drive itself at this point but the data is pretty important for me t save ( but not enough to send it to a clean room for 3k or more) .

Any suggestions on what to do at this point?
I suppose at the same time since i will be buying a new internal hard drive i would like some recommendations for a 4TB internal hard drive ( mostly for storage).

 

Well, actually, before the 1st time you should have made backups. ALL drives WILL fail - eventually. Every computer user should assume all their precious data will be lost at any second - and be prepared for that.

Chkdsk (check disk, or error checking) on such large drives can easily take much longer than 6 hours. Even several days. I recommend you just let it run until Chkdsk stops on its own.

You might try a recovery program like Recuva from the makers of CCleaner. Wise Data Recovery is also popular. But as you noted, any use of this drive risks further corruption. I sure would not try to boot from it as the boot process always involves opening many files and creating (writing) temporary files that may cause further corruption.

Good luck.

 

So after running the chkdsk command to fix it on the command prompt within another computer for the 3rd time it finally decided to fix the drive.

For some reason this thing did not want to fix the drive on the desktop it was in i had to take it out and use a dock . This was not a boot drive and just mostly used for storage.

Still kind of wondering what is wrong with the drive as crystaldiskmark and other software says its healthy and not showing bad sectors.
Anyways now that it seems all my data came back its time to back it all up as there is no way i will keep relying on drive drive.

Any good internal hard drives people can recommend that are 4TB? Prefer to stay under $140

funny thing is this hard drive that is giving me issues was already replaced once by WD which about about 1.5 years ago, the previous drive that had a load clicking sound that would cause the pc to freeze.

Seems like larger drives are more prone to failure because as this is my 3rd 3+ TB hard drive that i experienced issues with. All my other hard drives that are 1TB or under are still kicking some which are more than a decade old

If all drives will eventually fail then really there is no sureway to backup any of your personal data? Because the fact still remains if i back up my data into another hard drive the very same thing CAN happen too.

 

If only a 1 1/2 years old, I would contact WD and see if still under warranty.

Like many things these days, not all drives are created equal. Avoid the budget models. See this: https://hddmag.com/western-digital-hdd-colors-explained/

That's exactly why any robust backup plan involves several layers of backups - not just one. Backing up to an external drive is fine, but what happens if your house burns down or blown away by a tornado? Or a badguy breaks into your home and steals your computer and your backup drive? You lose your data, and your only backup.

So have multiple copies. And at least one should be "off site", like at a trusted neighbor's, a bank safe deposit box, or the cloud.

 

The problem with the warranty on the drive is that it had already been replaced once
the same hard drive model i noted above was replaced about 3 weeks of use when bought brand new

Apparently they only gave me 6 months warranty on the replacement drive they sent

Are there any models or specific large storage drives ( 3 TB+) that people here would recommend that they personally use?
I mostly just use the drive for internal storage and access the data maybe 2 or 3 times a week. I rarely ever use such large drives for OS and rarely store anything else than archives.

I think on the old drive that has been giving me issues i had maybe 7 or 8 steam games installed but i never actually got around to playing any of them except 1

I am surprised the drive failed this soon (again) because i did not use it much, basically just stored pictures, videos, some OS backups and every now and then i would download linux distros and keep them in case they ever took them off websites