HELP - Big time external drive failures

Pauls

I'm trying to run recuva on the 'other' drive (not the WD one) while it's connected to the lappy.

The initial scan that checks for deleted files found nothing.

I checked the box that checks a drive that's been r ae-formatted and it found a few files (but none of mine).

I then checked the box that does 'deep scan' and tried again. It reported that it was going to take 24 hours so I left it for a couple of minutes and then hit cancel (Just to try to see if it had found anything) It did appear that it had found some of my photos in there (the filenames looked familiar).

I've just started the 'deep scan' again, and I'm going to let it run to the end to see how well it does

closed

without answers, any progress will be slow.

try recuva, deep scan

Pauls

Closed, thanks for trying to help it's very much appreciated.

I'm note sure if you've re-read the thread but I did think I'd answered your queries, albeit in response to twistedphsyco.

However, just to re-cap :-

My WD drive was connected to my router via ethernet cable

My 'other' drive was connected directly to the WD drive via USB cable (I presume this is what you mean by chaining?)

When I tried to view the data on the WD drive wirelessly I couldn't get to any of the 'shares', meaning I couldn't see any data on the WD drive, nor on the 'other' drive. (The 'other' drive is mapped via a share on the WD drive)

I then disconnected the 'other' drive from the WD drive and connected it directly to the lappy via USB. I could get to the drive through windows explorer, however there were no files/directories anywhere to be seen

I have done nothing with the WD drive as yet

My back up procedure was simply to copy a directory from one drive to the other. I only really use the drives for photos & music so I just copy and paste into 2 locations instead of 1

closed

I suggest you let the deep scan finish, and also try the other drive on the laptop (assuming you have a decent virus scanner?)

don't you have the data on the laptop?

when you last copied the directory, were the photo's evident on the source drive, and did you notice any problems?

Pauls

I've been viewing photos, streaming music etc without issue since I bought the WD drive. I tend to store all of my pics/music externally, just figured it would be safer given the lappy is liable to get bumped/knocked/moved around etc and the HD is on constantly (pretty much)

I've not put anything new onto the external drives for a couple of weeks now, I did have to unplug everything earlier on today as we've had a move around at home, This has obviously caused something odd to happen on the WD drive and it decided that it'd be a good idea to re-format anything connected to the USB port at that moment in time, bizarre to say the least.

'deep scan' is now running, I'm going to let it get on with it. Will most likely report back in the morning as to how I'm getting on

closed

can you see anything on the second drive?

Pauls

I've not connected the WD drive directly to the lappy yet. I thought I should look at one at a time tbh.

I have connected to the WD drive using SSH (vi putty) and the 'shares' have disappeared. Basically when I log in this way it takes me directly into the /shares directory. When I've done this before there were 3 symbolic links pointing to different directories. The first 2 were something like 'downloads' and 'Public' and the last was something along the lines of 'usb1-?????-????' (which pointed to my 'other drive'). These have all gone.

There is a /DataVolume directory at the same level as the /shares directory, which is presumably where the data would actually be held, but this too is empty

I'm well confused. I'm almost embarrassed to say I work in IT. I just panicked!!

debitcardmayhem

Don't really know if it would help, but you have probably got *n*x formated disks, perhaps download systemrescued and burn it onto a CD or Usb stick and see if Gparted can read the drive vtoc , and if it can then maybe let the other guys help you and me . Look for it here http://www.sysresccd.org

Pauls

deep scan finsihed overnight, claims it's found around 35k files on the drive, but when it lists those files it's found it only lists 140 of them. There's a message at the bottom of the window saying it's ignoring the rest??

Could it be because I was only looking for pictures parhaps??

I'm just trying another deep scan, this time searching for everything.

Pauls

DebitCardMayhem - I've had a quick look at that page, all looks quite heavy!

I take it you have used this yourself?? Is it a case of running something on my lappy that looks at my linux drive, or would I need to run it directly on the drive itself??