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External Hard Drive Error

Hello Experts
I have Western Digital external hard drive, now all of sudden when I plug the hard drive it gives me the error

You need to format the disk in drive G: before you can use it.

I ran chkdsk, using the command chkdsk g: /f /r however it is processing every file as follows

File record segment 1 is unreadable.
 0 percent complete. (1 of 148480 file records processed)
File record segment 2 is unreadable.
 0 percent complete. (2 of 148480 file records processed)
File record segment 3 is unreadable.
 0 percent complete. (3 of 148480 file records processed)
File record segment 4 is unreadable.
 0 percent complete. (4 of 148480 file records processed)

I'm no sure the what's the status and what to do now
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dbrunton
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Download the Western Digital Data LIfeguard Diagnostic  http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=171&lang=en and see what it makes of your disk.  I suspect your disk is dead.
The status is that your drive is getting bad. Do you have valuable data on it?
If not then - reformat it.
Another question - does it have a separate power supply? Or does it get the power from USB cable?
Sometimes the lack of power can lead to such errors. Thus try to connect the drive to another PC and see if it behaves there the same.
If yes - then the drive is bad. Or its USB controller is bad.
In last case you need to disassemble the box and get the drive out of it. Connect it then to one of SATA connections in your PC and scan the drive with its manufacturer made tools (Seatools for Seagate and WDDiag for WD).
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Techrunner

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Thank you experts for your response.

Yes I have a very very valuable data on it.
I've used WD diagnostics tool and it says Too many bad sectors after scanninng.

I've connected the HDD to the laptop using USB to ATA cable. This hard drive was removed from the another laptop and that laptop has gone bad.
This hard drive worked with this cable I guess 2 to 3 times and then it started giving this error.
Also I connected this drive on another PCs but it behaves the same
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Dr. Klahn

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There is a slight chance that it will behave better is you connect it directly to a PC....
Yes i mean crack the case and get the drive connected normally (sata+power)..
Don't try to run chkdsk just see it is seen by the system and take whatever you can.
If it behaves the same then its time for data recovery depending on the value of your data.
Side note:  Many recent external drives no longer present an IDE or SATA interface.  The USB interface is built onto the drive.  In these situations, direct connection is no longer possible.  This is regrettable, as most of the external drive issues I've seen were in the little IDE/SATA-to-USB interface board.

If you decide to crack open the case, Google for how to do it first.  There's no space to spare in most cases so it's overly easy to damage the drive controller or the interface.
Interesting about the USB interface....i have to admit i haven't  seen one....but its has being some time since i cracked opened my external drive...
Well its true ....WD made a PCB which essentially integrates SATA to USB bridge on PCB....
There is way to connect it to Sata Interface but its not for the faint hearted.....
So currently the hard drive is connected to my laptop using USB to ATA cable, I'm running chkdsk so shall I stop this chkdsk check or keep it running until it completes?
If the drive is throwing hard errors, in my opinion it's profitless to run CHKDSK against it.  And if CHKDSK decides to tamper with the structure, you could end up worse off than you are now.
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I plugged the hard drive to another PC, however after plug I turn on the PC but it stuck at Starting Windows Loading Screen.

Please advise.
Did you plug it into the USB or to SATA?
I connected with SATA to a PC
I tried on another PC as well, the windows stuck at Starting Windows Screen as soon as I removed the defective hard drive I can login smoothly
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I cannot send it anywhere it has very confidential data on it.
Is there a way I can reformat the drive and  recover the data using ?
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Can you please advice the best tool to recover the data from HDD after reformat, no problem is if is paid ?
If the system won't even start with this drive connected - how do you plan to use a recovery tool?
Sure there is on - GetDataBack www.runtime.org
It is the best one. But it needs your drive to be well recognized and detected by system.
What about backups? Do you take backups of your important data?
When I can the hard drive using USB to ATA, the PC detects the hard drive but it prompts to format before using it so I format I will loose data and then I will need a software to recover data.
If the system fails to start once the drive is connected then formatting will fail as well.
But try GetDataBack - its trial version can show if the data could be recovered from unformatted drive.
Thanks, I will try now
Another this HDD has 3 partitions G,H and E. G and H has data. E was system reserved. E partition is detecting properly and working fine. The issue only with G and H partitions
I installed Get Data Back. After installation at launch screen I get the error " Error 23 reading boot sector on Disk2 (RT#296)
@noxcho You were right I cannot format the drive as well
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I can pay for recovery but I want to recover myself, is it possible ?
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I'm using now eassos partition guru to repair bad sectors lets see whats the outcome
But you should understand that repaired sectors will loose the data forever...
you can try recovering the data
here's how : install tyhe drive as 2nd drive in a working pc - do NOT boot from it
install GDB for recovery : http://www.runtime.org/

do your recovery

i have repaired many drives with HDDRegenerator :  http://www.dposoft.net/hdd.html      

here's how i handle bad drives :
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Hard_Drives/A_3000-The-bad-hard-disk-problem.html
Thanks Nabos
So shall I start with GDB or HDDRegenerator ?
Of course you could always revert to your backups?
I don't have backup that is the issue
Always backup data first
then try HDDRegenerator - it has repaired many drives for me, and i never lost anything
Ok will try HDDregenerator
Do I need to purchase first ?
you can run it - if it finds an error, it will only repair 1 sector
but you can already see if it repairs 1 sector - then buy it
Thanks
Shall I connect the defective HDD to another PC using USB to ATA cable or SATA cable and power?
by sata cable and power works fastest and best for all soft and hardware
Thanks I've already started scanning the drive using bootable HDDRegenerator
Let see how it goes
I hope it will recover my hard drive.
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What a bad service from HDD Regen
I bought a tool and I raise the ticket for some technical issue and until now I didn't a got single response from them !!
It looks these people are forged and thieves
This is a one-man company. And what the tool does it just sending repeating read/write requests to each sector. Which can play a bad joke with the data.
Finally I got reply and they have promised to refund the amount

So what I can do finally now ?
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