A story of data loss.
And a short while later:
I do have a tip, but you’re not going to like it.
This is a question I see all too often. It frustrates the heck out of me every time.
I’ll share what I would do.
More importantly, I’ll share what you should have done and what you must do from here on out to avoid being in this situation again.
Is your data in only one place?
Your external drive died, and the only copy of your data was on it. That data may be gone for good. A pro might recover it, but it could cost a lot. The real fix is prevention: back up your files. If it’s in one place, it isn’t backed up.
Getting the data
Since you’ve already attempted the basic troubleshooting, like trying the drive on other computers, I believe you now need to take that drive to a data recovery service and hope that:
- They can recover your data.
- You can afford it.
There is something wrong with that drive. I can’t tell you what, because it could be many things. It could be as simple as the cable, so of course, try another cable if you haven’t already. But the problem could be significantly more complicated. It could be the electronics in the external drive or the hard disk drive itself. There’s no way to know for sure.
Many of the things we might try can easily make things worse. This is why I want you to take it to a professional if, in fact, you need to recover data from it. It’s too easy for you to accidentally erase the data.
For example, you indicated that you tried to format it. Don’t.
It’s a good thing formatting didn’t work, because formatting erases all the data. In your attempts to make things better, you could have easily made things much, much worse.
So if you need to get the data, stop trying to use the drive and see a professional.
If you can’t afford one, the data on that drive is lost. Forever.
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Don’t risk losing everything! I’ll show you how to back up Windows step by step, using free tools you already have. Protect your files, photos, and memories so you’re ready when, not if, disaster strikes.#30103
Preventing data loss
All I can suggest at this point is to remember my golden rule:
If it’s in only one place, it’s not backed up.
That means if anything happens to that data, it’s gone forever. Period. No exceptions.
It’s frustrating to see these scenarios happen over and over again because the prevention is so easy.
Back up your data. Make a copy. Do something so that if the device holding your data is lost or breaks, you haven’t lost the data.
Hardware breaks. Drives and computers are lost.
If the only copy of important data lives on broken hardware or a lost device, there’s a good chance it’s lost and gone forever.
Unless you have a backup.
I don’t care how you do it, honestly. What I care about is that you do it.
With a backup, you restore the file, and life goes on. No drama, no fuss.
Without backups, there’s a good chance you’ll be in this situation again.
Backing up means making copies
Backing up is not a location; it’s the process of making additional copies of your files.
Just because you put data on something you call a “backup drive” doesn’t make it a backup. The golden rule still applies: if it’s in only one place, it’s not backed up — even if you call that one place a backup.
If it’s in only one place, you run the risk of losing it all forever in an instant.
Do this
Back up. I don’t know how else to say it. Learn from the story of data loss above and start backing up your data, and indeed your entire computer, today.
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If it were mine I’d be looking at removing the drive from its case and connecting it direct to a the motherboard in one of my machines: it could just be the electronics in the case. Before someone else points it out, I know of course that is a lot more difficult to do if you only have laptops. In that case maybe a knowledgeable friend…
If you only have a laptop, you can always get a USB housing for that drive and plug it into the laptop. Those are relatively inexpensive.
I’ve been doing computers for about 15 years now. It never ceases to frustrate me when someone thinks I can just boot it up and it will be brought back. I think people should be required to take a common sense computer class on the basics of what you should be doing to protect a computer / the data.
I use a SATA/IDE external USB connection for dodgy laptop drives and run “Mini Tool Power Data Recovery” This has helped me out with several dodgy drives!
While I have such a device and it is easy to do, I believe what is suggested by Tim is beyond what the poster can do. I stopped giving that kind of advice, because when things goes wrong, I would get blamed for giving the advice. if the device is not recognized, no regular data recovery will see the drive.
My sister’s laptop wouldn’t boot last month (got stuck on black screen after “ASUS” logo). There wasn’t a lot I could do, so I recommended taking it to a professional. First, I wanted to show her that her data was probably okay, so I put in my Linux Mint live CD (that I use with my desktop), and although Linux started up fine, I couldn’t see her hard drive listed. She eventually found a friend to fix her laptop, but he didn’t give us a whole lot of explanation as to what went wrong (maybe a Windows update, maybe having Skype always on, etc.). I’m glad someone was able to bring her computer back to life, but I am so curious how it was done and if I could do it :). Anyway,
I know there are lots of details missing, but is there a simple explanation for WHY I WASN’T ABLE TO SEE HER FILES USING THE LIVE CD?
The original failure was likely hardware / hard disk related.
Thanks. He did say that he was “running some tests” and that he couldn’t promise it wouldn’t go black again in a few days, so I figured it was something beyond my abilities. At least my sister learned the importance of backing up. I’ve sugggested it to her–and even secretly backed up some of her files :)–but she had to have this happen, for it to really sink in that her pictures and important project may have been lost forever. Thanks Leo, for the articles and posts.
You could try the Gibson Research spinrite program. So long as the disk is spinning it has a chance. Type – steve gibson spinrite – into any search engine and it should take you there. I used it once many years ago and it did the trick. Took all day but it recovered the disk.
Anyone hear of putting the drive in a freezer for a day and getting the files off it, before it warmed up. also about spin rite is right here.
http://ask-leo.com/spinrite_repair_hard_disk_failures_and_recover_your_data.html
Yes I’ve heard that can be successful. But definitely not a guarantee. I had a hard drive crash, and freezing it would give me a few minutes of access with Spinrite, but not enough to get any data off it.
Yes have successfully retrieved data on my d-i-l’s dead laptop drive using the freezer method. Took about 10 cycles of freeze/connect over a few days but managed to get off all the photos from a once in a lifetime trip which hadn’t been backed up, due to being on the road. Time consuming hard work but successful, and confirmed to me on this occasion it wasn’t a myth.
A couple of years ago I had a WD MyBookWorld drive (the white cased single drive unit with the blue circles), that gave up the ghost, failing to boot up.
Fortunately it was the interface PC board that had failed, so I was able to add the drive (a WD 500 gbyte) to my secondary PC. The drive was formatted to ext2, so I was able to recover all the data from with by installing suitable software.
I see this problem all the time too. Somehow, the “backup to an external hard drive” message gets translated to “store your data on an external hard drive and it will be safe”. Maybe someday someone will think of a better way to explain the backup concept so everyone just “gets it” –although, I’m not sure you could make it simpler than Leo does. –Maybe more pictures would help? 🙂
“If there’s only one copy, it’s not backed up.”
Not sure how much clearer I can make it. 🙂
I have customers I’ve gone over and over this with. Having your data backed up means you have it stored in at least two locations. For whatever reason, though, a lot of people seem to have trouble grasping that. They think they’ve backed up properly because they’re storing most of their data on an external hard drive. It’s difficult to make them understand that there’s nothing magical about an external hard drive. It’s a machine, and eventually it will fail, the same way that your laptop will eventually fail, and if the only place your data is stored is on that external hard drive, eventually you’re going to lose it.
The most difficult component for a computer tech to deal with is that one which is located between the keyboard and the chair. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why Leo kept harping on “If it’s only in one place, it’s not backed up.” Then it finally dawned on me. Many of those components sitting in the chair couldn’t get it through their thick processors that files aren’t backed up simply beacuse they reside on media which is commonly used for backup, such as external drives and even worse: optical media. Finally, after reading thousands of Ask Leo! questions and comments, I began to understand how this was such a common misconception. So here it is in a slightly different form:
Definition: Backup – An additional copy or preferably copies of your data.
I had/still have, the white WD external hard drive. After I backed up files from computer to it, we moved, when I connected it later, my computer would not see it; I assumed I had bumped it and lost everything. I purchased another WD, and then realized I had the wrong power cord hooked to the white one. I put the correct one on, and it showed up on computer. I now have files backed up to both external drives. Persnickety drive!
I regularly backup all the computers in the household using Macrium Reflect. In addition to those backups, on a somewhat irregular basis, I make backups on separate hard drives from the routine backups. Files that I consider to be critical are in a Google Drive folder and synchronized between my PC and laptop. Because I use Cryptomator, those files and folders are copied to yet another hard drive unencrypted on a monthly basis. I know it is likely overkill, but having had a backup drive failure it was just a matter of replacing it and moving on.
When it comes to backing up, overkill is an oxymoron.
Talking about backup overkill, I guess maybe I take the gold medal. I use Linux Mint as an OS. My desktop has a 250GB SSD (containing the Mint OS and Home) and two 1TB internal spinning drives. I also have three external HD’s . Two are 1TB, both always connected, and the third is 3TB, normally offline. One of the external 1TB drives and the 3TB are for backups only. In addition I have a 50GB Megasync encrypted cloud account which is used to back up only my most essential folder (Documents) on a dynamic basis as extra security.
I have separate backup programs for OS and data. Both are front ends for Borg Backup, an ultra efficient backup program that makes compressed, encrypted and de-duplicated incremental snapshots. Both run every 4 hours, and include the OS, and the data folders throughout the system I deem most important. Weekly I manually run the Borg data backup program with a different profile to include everything on the two internal and one external data drives, to the 3TB external. In addition, at the same weekly basis I copy the OS backup repository from the 1TB external backup drive to the 3TB backup drive. When that’s finished I uplug the 3TB until the next weekly exercise. The third backup program is an offline, disk imaging program FoxClone which takes an image of my OS partition, also going to the 3TB external. I run it every couple weeks when I have time. Borg is so efficient at compression and de-duplication that everything fits on the 3TB with plenty room to spare.
My backup regimen is far simpler than @Fred St. John, Sr.’s, but I believe it’s still effective and complete.
I back up selected partitions (for both Windows 11 Pro 25H2 and Garuda Mokka Linux – I dual-boot) using Macrium Reflect Free to create weekly backup sets consisting of one full image and six differential images, and I keep four backup sets so I have access to any file I’ve backed up in the state it was in on any of the past twenty-eight days.
I have a free mega.nz account which provides 20GB storage, and I use their MEGAsync desktop app to synchronize selected folders/directories to their servers. Since I dual-boot Windows 11 Pro 25H2 with Garuda Mokka Linux, I have folders/directories for Windows, Linux, and both. On Windows I synchronize Documents, Pictures, and eBooks to WinD, WinP, and WinB respectively. On Garuda, I synchronize these directories to LinD LinP, and LinB respectively. For both OSes I synchronize Music and the custom folders/directories named Icons, MEGA, and Res to folders of the same names on mega.nz (Folder names on mega.nz have been changed).
I selected mega.nz because they offer 20GB storage with their free account, and their MEGAsync desktop app and true end-to-end encryption are included free with all accounts (the encryption key is stored on my computers so mega never has access to the content in my files, and everything’s always transferred between my computers and their servers). Finally they’re not overly aggressive with advertising. When I load my mega.nz’s account page in my web browser, I may get a single pop-up informing me about a featured service/app that I can easily dismiss if I want to, but that’s the end of it. No commercial adds on their website and never any advertising email messages.
I consider this a true backup regimen because all my important files are stored in three places, in my local folders/directories on both OSes, in my backup images on an external drive, and on mega.nz’s servers. I hope the information I’ve provided here helps others,
Ernie
All of the backup protocols are like Greek to me (and perhaps others). The writers are all quite knowledgeable re viable backups. I simply have. a Western Digital Passport, and am now concerned if my device is enough. Usually when I have a doubt, I call WD support and have them start my backup from scratch. Now I’m concerned what else I should do and who to trust with the expertise to do it.
Thanks to all for putting me in a fog.
Although it is paid software, I’ve found SpinRite (grc.com) to very helpful for recovering a HD when the drive doesn’t do you a solid. The software runs outside of windows and reads a disk at the hardware level. You would need create a USB drive and then boot from it. Once booted, choose the broken drive, and let it run. In some cases, it may run for a very long time depending on the amount of errors. There may be an instance where even SpinRite cannot fix disk errors, but the documentation for the software is worth reading and well done.
Leo also recommends SpinRite.
https://askleo.com/spinrite_repair_hard_disk_failures_and_recover_your_data/
They offer a 100% money back guarantee. If you don’t like it or if it doesn’t work, they’ll refund your money.