Western Digital Data recovery

Alwayslearningmore
Alwayslearningmore used Ask the Experts™
on
Good day,

I have a Western Digital external HDD
Modle WD10000H1NC-00

it seems the Drive is ok however it appears the controller has failed.

How can I get the data off this drive it seems to be formatted in a Linux file structure.

Some things are making me worried about the drive
EG I can't clone it. No idea why. Acronis just won't start the process saying my destination drive is not big enough.

In Windows I can see the drive under device manager however I cannot read the drive.

I am a little stumped I am installed Ubuntu now to see if I can see the data. Other then that I am not really sure what else to do.

Any suggestions would be great
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simpsonehh

Commented:
is the drive making any clicking sounds?  any physical damage?

try putting the drive into an external usb case.

this article references some recovery software:
http://lifehacker.com/5951822/how-can-i-recover-data-from-a-dead-or-erased-hard-drive
Alwayslearningmore

Author

Commented:
Nope the drive is not making any clicking sounds, I am pretty sure the drive is ok and raid controller is my issue. Even though it is only 1 hard drive seems WD have it setup as a RAID.

I can see the file structure of the drive it is a Linux Raid, It won't mount in ubuntu either, I am going to see if I can get another external drive that is the same model to us it's raid controller card.

Other ideas are welcomed !
Most Valuable Expert 2015
Commented:
Remove the drive from the NAS and connect it directly to an internal disk controller of your PC, then boot that PC using the partedmagic LiveCD. Then scan it using testdisk, maybe also Photorec, and if data is found use those tools to copy the data to some other location. How those tools are used is explained in their online help:

http://partedmagic.com

If that doesn't help, and if your other NAS case doesn't help, send the disk to a recovery agency if you have lost your backups, and if the data really is worth the price for recovery.
Alwayslearningmore

Author

Commented:
Thanks Rindi,  will let you know how I go.
Alwayslearningmore

Author

Commented:
Parted Magic worked I was able to read the data and copy to to a NTFS drive, it has been a very long day. I have had may system crashes in Parted Magic however it seems I have been able to recover the clients data.

Thank you all for your help.
rindi
Most Valuable Expert 2015

Commented:
Make sure you preach your clients to do regular backups, then it won't be necessary to recover data in the future, or at least you only loose data between the last backup and the crash, which usually isn't such a big problem. Besides, if he doesn't backup, you can then tell him you told him of the importance of it, and then you can usually also charge more for a recovery...
Alwayslearningmore

Author

Commented:
This client was refereed to me for the first time today. Trust me i LOVE backups. And I will certainly be taking the opportunity to make sure they have a good system in place to help avoid future issues.

Thanks again.

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