Western Digital Due external drive bay

[Tech bud]

I had a customer that had a huge 14TB drive that was used as a backup drive. He originally bought another one for off-site storage and he was going to set that one up with RAID 0. He accidentally formatted the one that was in place and being used for back up and storage. He realized what he was doing after it had started.

It wasn't recognizing the drive originally, I gave it a new drive letter and it recognized the drive. I then ran EaseUS data recovery on the drive and it got data. All of it was mostly .swf files. Also got some cad files. But can't seem to open any of them.

I assumed that he was doing work with Adobe Flash and that was the files he needed. Saying he can't open them.

Am I missing something here? I still have a copy here, but can't seem to get these files to play either.

 

[sapphirescales]

I've had MUCH better luck with R-Studio than ANY other data recovery software I've used (including Knoll On-Track's). I would run it through R-Studio and see what you can get.

 

[HCHTech]

That post is such a word-salad that I gave up trying to make sense of it halfway through. 14TB drive, though? That's a $600 part, and he bought 2 of them? It sounds like he can afford data recovery - I'd be sending the thing out to Luke or Brian, that's for sure.

 

[Tech bud]

That post is such a word-salad that I gave up trying to make sense of it halfway through. 14TB drive, though? That's a $600 part, and he bought 2 of them? It sounds like he can afford data recovery - I'd be sending the thing out to Luke or Brian, that's for sure.

I never proof read, but got it better.

But I just don't see what they would do that I can't do, unless they have a clean room

 

[Alexey]

14TB Duo is a RAID array probably?

 

[Tech bud]

14TB Duo is a RAID array probably?

Correct, It would be two 7TB drives

 

[Alexey]

Since the RAID is probably still working (because formatting does not break it), get some better software and retry. Should be in reasonably recoverable condition. Also you do not need a drive letter for recovery; I believe there is no harm in assigning one, but general rule is as few changes as possible.

 

[lcoughey]

I never proof read, but got it better.

But I just don't see what they would do that I can't do, unless they have a clean room

I do have a clean room.

 

[Alexey]

This case does not look like it requires a clean room, since apparently there are no mechanical faults and no need to open a drive.

 

[lcoughey]

This case does not look like it requires a clean room, since apparently there are no mechanical faults and no need to open a drive.

I agree...just replying to the statement. Though, it is possible that a data recovery lab will have a lot more knowledge on how to safely recover the data. Before advice can be given, can more details be provided?

1. What file system was the drive formatted before and after the accidental formatting?
2. What was done to give it a drive letter?
3. What kinds of files were on the drive?
4 How full was the drive?
5. Where were the recovered files saved?
6. Was the original cloned before work attempted?

 

[Tech bud]

I agree...just replying to the statement. Though, it is possible that a data recovery lab will have a lot more knowledge on how to safely recover the data. Before advice can be given, can more details be provided?

1. What file system was the drive formatted before and after the accidental formatting?
2. What was done to give it a drive letter?
3. What kinds of files were on the drive?
4 How full was the drive?
5. Where were the recovered files saved?
6. Was the original cloned before work attempted?

1. File system Was NTFS. Standard Windows.
2. I used EaseUs partitioning
3. This was a back up drive and also used to store videos and pictures over the years
4. 4TB range, from what he says
5. I saved them to my server
6. I didn't clone. My thought process is it isn't being saved to. So don't see how I could break it. But educate me if i'm wrong. haha

 

[nerd2u]

Have you made an image of the drives or are you beating the snot out of the originals?

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[lcoughey]

1. File system Was NTFS. Standard Windows.
2. I used EaseUs partitioning
3. This was a back up drive and also used to store videos and pictures over the years
4. 4TB range, from what he says
5. I saved them to my server
6. I didn't clone. My thought process is it isn't being saved to. So don't see how I could break it. But educate me if i'm wrong. haha

Step 2 should never have been done without a backup clone. Any writing to the drive can have negative impact the on recovery.

Because the drive was reformatted with similar configuration, it is likely that the new MFT will overwrite some of the old. You'll definitely want to use a better recovery program like R-Studio and will need to run a full scan of the drive to find lost NTFS MFT and INDX records to get a partial file tree and a RAW recovery of the remaining files.

 

[Tech bud]

Live and learn on that one, never had a problem with it in the past. Maybe I was getting lucky

 

[Alexey]

it is likely that the new MFT will overwrite some of the old

I just run some tests (on Windows 10), and found it will overwrite first 32 MFT entries, if you just format it and do not write anything explicitly. So on reformat, the data loss is limited to a very small number of files (I guess 8 files or so, with first 16 or 24 entires being system reserved anyway). Some other parts are trashed obviously but they are not of much use, MFT mirror, transaction log, USN journal and whatnot.