Data Recovery on 3TB Drive

[peter.clark]

Has anyone else ever had a data recovery tool scan more clusters than should be on the drive??

I'm recovering a 3tb drive which was "accidentally" converted into a RAW disk - it's been running at it for 24 hours now and only appears to be around half way through.

My concern is that this is what it's saying:

Searching metadata...

Scanning cluster 133889123456 out of 5860268024, with the former growing more and more and the latter not budging an inch.

Seems unlikely it's scanning non-existant sectores, or is that just me? Am I missing something?

Thanks

 

[lcoughey]

Did you clone the drive first? I recommend getting a solid clone of the drive first.

 

[peter.clark]

Did you clone the drive first? I recommend getting a solid clone of the drive first.

Yes... OSFClone copied the RAW data for me onto identical disk... Not sure how that would effect the cluster ratio though? Unless it's because it's a GPT volume? :/

 

[lcoughey]

What are you using to scan the drive? Is it capable of handling the 64bit lba? A lot of software recovery tools are still limited to 2TB drives.

 

[imageblur]

"Getdataback" by runtime software is a software tool that we use. It takes forever, but it does the job. We have an 85% to 90% on data recovery. Not 100%, but I don't think most software can.

 

[peter.clark]

What are you using to scan the drive? Is it capable of handling the 64bit lba? A lot of software recovery tools are still limited to 2TB drives.

I'm using Stellar Phoenix v5.x which claims to support capacities of over 2tb... Can only assume it supports 64 bit, although a quick google would indicate that 48-bit LBA supports up to 144pb? As a novice of data recovery I'm not all that technical (at the current time) lol

 

[lcoughey]

I have played with several Stellar products with which I have seen a 0% recovery rate. I suspect that R-Studio would bring up the file system almost immediately, unless it is severely damaged or encrypted.

 

[peter.clark]

I have played with several Stellar products with which I have seen a 0% recovery rate. I suspect that R-Studio would bring up the file system almost immediately, unless it is severely damaged or encrypted.

Is R-Studio your personal favourite?

As mentioned, I'm relatively new to data recovery, I purchased Stellar on the reviews it had on several websites, seemed to come out above R-Studio... but if you have positive experience with it I'll give it a go

 

[lcoughey]

You can download and try the demo for free. From the end user experience, I'd say that R-Studio is one of the best all around options available.

 

[peter.clark]

You can download and try the demo for free. From the end user experience, I'd say that R-Studio is one of the best all around options available.

I'll give it a go, thanks for the help

 

[lcoughey]

If you get stumped, I might be able to look at it remotely for you.

 

[300DDR]

IMO: Stellar = all marketing, no substance. R-Studio = all around best.

 

[300DDR]

Also you didn't respond to lcoughey's question about "encryption" which is important. Was this a bare/internal drive or did it come out of an enclosure (like a MyBook)? If the latter, then probably encrypted (and you can only read data if you use the enclosure's PCB). You could post a screenshot of the first sector and we could probably tell you if it's encrypted or not.

 

[JustInspired]

+1 for R-Studio. That and DDRescue are my primary data recovery tools thanks to the recommendations of the kindly folk here.