Unable to mount disk after scan

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zabarnick

New member
Sep 7, 2023
2
0
2 TB disk began misbehaving under win10 -- intermittent no boot. Eventually windows would no longer recognize the disk (no disk letter assigned).

I performed Level 2 scan which took many days but finally finished successfully. Now windows (or mac) still cannot mount the disk (no drive letter in win10 and no mounting on a mac).

How do I get a computer to access my files on this disk?
 
What type of media is the disk, a HDD or an SSD? Did your level 2 scan find/fix anything? The fact that you could run the scan implies that the PC *can* see the disk on some level. That being the case, it's likely the boot record or the partition or filesystem data is affected, and so Windows refuses to accept it. Your best bet would be to back up the disk (in essence make a disk image of it) before attempting some sort of data recovery tool.

Well of course your best bet would have been to have a working backup to start with, but we all know this is a lesson we all learn the hard way.
 
Thanks PHolder. This is a 2 TB HDD and the level 2 scan recovered about 30 sectors with only 1 unrecovered sector. I was hoping that spinrite was the data recovery tool for this, but it looks like I need a tool that will try to find individual files to recover and save to another disk, right? What tool do you recommend?
 
2 TB disk began misbehaving under win10 -- intermittent no boot.
level 2 scan recovered about 30 sectors with only 1 unrecovered sector
I wonder how many of those sectors might have been toward the start of the disk. If it was having "intermittent no boot" that implies something serious happened to the boot sector or to the Windows files which would have probably been the first files written to the disk.

Do you have another bootable disk or PC? Could you put this disk in as a secondary device and then maybe see if it will respond enough to let you get your files. (i.e. I presume it was your bootable disk, and Windows won't boot any more, but it might still be working enough to let you peruse your files.)

I've personally never used data recovery software, so I don't have experienced advice. I know a lot of the providers of such software are preying on your bad luck and want lots of money to let you get your data back. Some of them will give you some sort of view/estimate of what they can do without paying, though.

The only brand name that I can bring to memory without a Google is EaseUS. https://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm

PLEASE NOTE: These types of programs can make a situation *worse*. It's better to have a backup if you can so if things go really off the rails you might start over.
 
I have had good results with Testdisk when recovering files from a damaged disk. It is free from https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk.

The only issue may be that if the disk is really damaged, running ANY recovery software on it may make things worse. However, if SR recovered about 30 sectors, and only found one unrecoverable sectors, Testdisk may be able to recover the files, even if you have to rebuild the MFT and boot sector.