[phillpower2]

From my reply #27

 

as there is nothing physically wrong with your HDDs further investigation is required to try and identify what caused the data corruption in the first place so as to avoid the possibility of it being replicated on any new storage devices that you may hook up, this is why it is so important that you now check for malware,

 

 

If your computer is infected so will your new storage devices become, better to wait for the all clear.

[Advertisements]

From my reply #27

 

as there is nothing physically wrong with your HDDs further investigation is required to try and identify what caused the data corruption in the first place so as to avoid the possibility of it being replicated on any new storage devices that you may hook up, this is why it is so important that you now check for malware,

 

 

If your computer is infected so will your new storage devices become, better to wait for the all clear.

Thank you! The thing is, will I ever. It is now a week and no response. I am in the waiting room, so hopefully not much longer.

[JoyfulNoise]

From my reply #27

 

as there is nothing physically wrong with your HDDs further investigation is required to try and identify what caused the data corruption in the first place so as to avoid the possibility of it being replicated on any new storage devices that you may hook up, this is why it is so important that you now check for malware,

 

 

If your computer is infected so will your new storage devices become, better to wait for the all clear.

Thank you! The thing is, will I ever. It is now a week and no response. I am in the waiting room, so hopefully not much longer.

[phillpower2]

Unfortunately the malware removal forums are the busiest and resolving malware infection not a five minute job, still safer to wait but I do understand your frustration.

[JoyfulNoise]

Unfortunately the malware removal forums are the busiest and resolving malware infection not a five minute job, still safer to wait but I do understand your frustration.

Thank you for sharing. Not frustrated yet , I am hoping that I can get an answer by this week if not I might have to move forward no matter what.

[JoyfulNoise]

Hello Everyone,

 

I hope everybody is having a great weekend. Update here, I finished the Malware checkup and it came up clean. Here is the thread if you would like to check it out. http://www.geekstogo...-2#entry2585014

 

So, is there any other way to get my drive accessible or is it basically start over and reformat? I would like to get it accessible before I do,  so I can compare with my data recovery if I did get them all.

 

Thank you!

[phillpower2]

Try Mini Tool (free) from here

 

The whole article is worth reading first but if you are in a hurry you are looking for the Lost Partition Recovery option due to the fact that the drive converted to RAW for whatever reason.

[JoyfulNoise]

Try Mini Tool (free) from here

 

The whole article is worth reading first but if you are in a hurry you are looking for the Lost Partition Recovery option due to the fact that the drive converted to RAW for whatever reason.

Thank you. I will take a look!

[phillpower2]

You are welcome 

[JoyfulNoise]

Best Answer

Hello Everyone,

 

I am making a final update here. I also would like to give a special thank you and shout-out to my boys phillpower2 and FreeBooter! Thank you so much for your excellent service and help.

 

I have now reformatted my 2 external hard drives & transferred my recovered data to them. The Hard drives are working great. I did lose some data and some of the recovered PDF files won't open, but I believe I recovered 90-95% of it from what I see so far. I did learn a lesson and if this type of thing happens in the future I won't lose my data. One hard drive will be used as my working drive and the other as the backup source, but I have two other external hard drives that I will make additional image backups.

 

If there is any other advice for me to apply in the future please don't hesitate to respond. Any other questions please let me know!

I wish everyone a Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!

JoyfulNoise

[phillpower2]

Hello JoyfulNoise,

 

If there is any other advice for me to apply in the future 

 

 

For your most important data, having it stored on a removable drive that can be kept somewhere secure like a wall safe is a good idea as is backing up to the Cloud.

 

You are most welcome btw   thank you for your kind words and likewise seasons greetings and a healthy and prosperous new year to you and yours 

[JoyfulNoise]

We are glad to hear your issue has been resolved!

When backing up important data to backup drive make sure file system is not corrupted by executing Chkdsk X: /f command replace the X: drive letter with drive letter you want to scan for errors.

 

Thank you FreeBooter! Even though I would have reformatted the drives no matter what, The only thing is I wish I could have been able to get the drives accessible before I did and that I could of recovered all of my files, but hey it is what it is. Otherwise, yes, issue resolved and I will be ready if the next issue arrises.

 

Thank you for the advice. In an earlier post, you mentioned that data loss won't happen when running Chkdsk, but just for safety measures, do you think I should make an extra backup just in case? Are there other methods to see if the file system is corrupted? Since my hard drives are working, you wouldn't think that there would be any file system issues, but to hey to make sure is better that having problems in the future!

[JoyfulNoise]

Hello JoyfulNoise,

 

If there is any other advice for me to apply in the future 

 

 

For your most important data, having it stored on a removable drive that can be kept somewhere secure like a wall safe is a good idea as is backing up to the Cloud.

 

You are most welcome btw   thank you for your kind words and likewise seasons greetings and a healthy and prosperous new year to you and yours 

 

Thank you phillpower2! I will look into that. No problem and people like yourselves need to hear how great of a job you are doing and even be honored. Not many do. Thank you for the wishes!

Edited by JoyfulNoise, 19 December 2016 - 05:24 PM.

[JoyfulNoise]

@FreeBooter

 

I remembered one more thing I want to ask you about Chkdsk. If I ran what you said, will it possibly fix some of the recovered PDF files that could not open.

 

Here is what the error message reads

 

 

Adobe Acrobat Reader DC could not open 'example.pdf' because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded).

[JoyfulNoise]

No those files are damage running Chkdsk command cannot repair them.

 

Ok, Thank you for your help.