How can i recover my samsung external hard disk data when it is not detected??

Hi all

I recently bought a Samsung external hard disk in Australia. I have kept some important data in that. unfortunately yesterday my laptop has formatted. After installing windows i tried to connect the hard disk to laptop but it is not detecting. Now i want recover data from hard disk. Can any suggest the way for doing it..

Thanks in Advance..

Just reinstalling Windows should not cause this problem. There are a number of possibilities here;

1) Your laptop requires a special USB driver (NOT likely); does it recognize any other USB mass storage device?
2) The USB port has gone bad; try another port on the same on the laptop, OR another device on the USB port.
3) Did the Hard disk come with any decryption software that needs to be installed on the host?
4) Get into Drive Management, and see if the drive shows up. If it doesnt, most probably it is a hardware issue.

If you get back with your feedback on the above, we'll take it from there.

Regards,

Anand.

Hi ard

Thanks for reply...The hard disk is not detecting since from older windows itself. It is not due to reinstallation.
1. I have USB driver for my laptop, even i tried with two more laptops also
2. I tried with another ports also
3. No it doesn't have any decryption software
4. I didn't tried so far

Well, if in step (4) the drive does show up, most probably the partition table in your external drive has got erased/damaged. Your actual data might still be intact, but you'll have to be careful. You could try a partition recovery software.

If, on the other hand it doesnt show up in 'Dusk Management', I'd say the disk's got a hardware problem.

Regards,

Anand

Most probably it is a hardware problem.contact the service center there is a ilittle chance of recovery

From what You have said,
I think you can try to get the external hard disk out of it's enclosure
And connect it directly to the motherboard and power supply.
If you are not experienced in opening up and tinkering with pc
Innards then you can ask any expert to do it for you. Maybe you can get
Acces to your data from my computer itself.

Good suggestion from SPS; if you manage to open the casing (you'd be voiding the warranty, though!), you'll most probably find the drive inside is a standard SATA 2.5". Just connect it to your motherboard SATA port, and hopefully you should have access.

Regards,

Anand Dhuru

You will find that some manufacturer now use a custom control board, that as the drives electonics and usb interface all in one. Therefore you may not be able to plug it directly even if you remove it from the case.

Can you start up from a floppy or cd? One that has utilities to check a disk for errors.

To do this, it might help to remove your laptop's hd.

Is your external hd formatted as NTFS? If your laptop hd is FAT32 only then it can't read or access or recognize an NTFS disk.

Re: Recover data from external hard drive

Restoration
h**p://download.cnet.com/Restoration/3000-2094_4-10322950.html

I think its better to connect your disk with other computer and run different data recovery software and through that way you can easily get 80% of your data if you use best available software.

What is status of partition does it have some format RAW or similar ?

Did you try chkdsk utility with parameter for fixing errors ?

DON'T USE CHKDSK on a backup in need of recovery!

CHKDSK works on a filesystem (FAT variants) - navenmou already said the disk isn't recognized. That also means no partitions recognized (so far), no filesystem to access. Thus CHKDSK would have nothing to work on - suggesting it is pointless. FDISK or equivalent would be more useful @ this point.

2nd, using CHKDSK with "fix errors" parameter might cause writes to a filesystem. If partition and/or filesystem isn't recognized correctly, that might cause loss of data that was still recoverable! :twisted: Bottom line: don't EVER use CHKDSK, SCANDISK or similar tools on your last remaining copy! First use a utility like Linux "dd" tool or disk recovery software to sector-copy the entire disk or partition to another drive, and let recovery tools loose on that copy.

If this external drive was used (and thus accessed) successfully until right before re-installing Windows, I can't imagine how this problem occurred in the 1st place... Was this external drive connected to the machine during the re-install (= stupid), or what? Navenmou is still a little short on steps taken + info provided, I'd advise him a 3-step procedure:

1. First find out if machine is currently able to detect / use external storage devices through USB ports. Check BIOS settings if all USB ports are enabled, hardware device manager, and (important!) see if an external USB drive/stick that is known to work on another machine, can be accessed on this one.
2. Find out if the external drive is still detected as a hardware device. For example connect on bootup & watch POST messages, or connect to another machine & check hardware devices. If this step fails, connecting external drive directly to a motherboard (or transplant the drive into another external drive casing) might solve the problem.
3. If detected: check if partitions can be recognized. A free tool like GParted would be suitable for this.

If you get to point 3), you're practically done - but avoid making ANY write to this drive until you have recovered what data can be recovered. PERIOD!

My friend who told you that about chkdsk and FAT partition ? :shock: chkdsk utility works on NTFS also. I recover over 50 partitions on that way. :shock: How do you mean FDISK ? From Win98 and MSDOS ? My friend this is old utility this dont works on WinXP/Win7.

Bottom line: don't EVER use CHKDSK, SCANDISK or similar tools on your last remaining copy! First use a utility like Linux "dd" tool or disk recovery software to sector-copy the entire disk or partition to another drive, and let recovery tools loose on that copy.

Click to expand...

My friend I disagree with you. My expirience told me that.


He can do several thing:

1. To check this HD direct in PC case without external USB rack case, to eliminate malfunction of controller.
2. Use Chkdsk utility if possible, sometimes not, if possible my expirience tell me that is great chance to return HD in working status. Only if HD is not damaged totaly.
3. Use Getdataback software. With this utility I return data after 7 formats and repartitioning.


I return alone several totaly dead HD in life with swaping of HD controllers, and few with replacing heads. You can find some specialized company which recovering dead HD.



What can be cause of this, maybe stupid but check that :

1. If you put this like device into USB 1.1 this device is not regonized. Put it in USB 2.0 port, try on other PCs.

2. I have several cases, that this devices wont work on some PCs, because they have bad USB 5V voltage. Replacement of PSU solve problem.

tpetar said:

My friend who told you that about chkdsk and FAT partition ? :shock: chkdsk utility works on NTFS also. I recover over 50 partitions on that way. :shock: How do you mean FDISK ? From Win98 and MSDOS ? My friend this is old utility this dont works on WinXP/Win7.

Click to expand...

Very possible... I moved from Windows XP to Linux & never looked back. :-D

Stuff like disk recovery is soooooo much easier with standard Linux tools as compared to what you get with a basic Windows install. However you have to know how to use those, so that's not much of an option for your average Windows user. 2nd, topic starter hasn't given us much detail yet about what drive, what filesystem, what windows version and/or what tools (or versions of those) he's used. And the re-installed Windows might be different from Windows version used to access the external drive before. So more details from navenmou would be appreciated.

The other thing: regardless how often you've done so successfully in the past, and regardless of how good / reliable your tools are: if it's the last remaining copy then writing to it before data is recovered, is stupid. With software (and hardware too, btw) there's 0 guarantee something will work, a mistake is easily made, and Murphy is always waiting for a chance to kill data wherever you give it an opportunity. Last copy -> use it read-only until data is recovered.

If topic starter had a working backup (>1 copy), there would be no need for this thread. But it's too early so say he lost his data.

Probably this will be his school. I saw several people, they have important data on flash drives, flash drives stop responding from some unexplained reason.

Old school, keep important data on several HD and locations. I often use program called "Beyond Compare", this software can synchronyze only difference, and changes in tons and tons of folders and files.

tpetar said:

I saw several people, they have important data on flash drives, flash drives stop responding from some unexplained reason.

Click to expand...

Not surprising... I've seen Dead On Arrival drives (including flash) more than once, even when those were handled carefully (ESD safe etc). And a flash disk (SD card, I think) where reading some blocks of sectors returned different data than what was written - but without reporting write OR read errors (!). Also I've seen an USB stick that became totally unresponsive (device not recognized hardware-wise, etc) after being pulled out accidentally during a read operation (again: !! wtf? :shock: ).

Therefore a proper backup strategy should account for failure of any single medium @ any point in time, preferably avoid data loss when >1 medium fails in a short time frame. With such a backup strategy in place, failure of any single medium would just be a matter of get replacement & make a new copy. Silly how many people don't do this & then cry like a baby when they've lost a month of work or their treasured vacation / family pix... :lol:

If it's important: do it right (and thus, spend the time+money necessary to do it right). If that's too much trouble, simply accept that you may suffer data loss some time... All storage media fail sooner or later, it's not "if" but "when".

Not surprising... I've seen Dead On Arrival drives (including flash) more than once, even when those were handled carefully (ESD safe etc). And a flash disk (SD card, I think) where reading some blocks of sectors returned different data than what was written - but without reporting write OR read errors (!). Also I've seen an USB stick that became totally unresponsive (device not recognized hardware-wise, etc) after being pulled out accidentally during a read operation (again: !! wtf? ).

Click to expand...

I also confirm that, I get one flash with that anomaly. You can write data on it, and no error, and when perform reading he read all and all ok, but when try to open document or start executable file then error appear.

Turn the computer off without the external hard drive being plugged in.
plug the external hard drive in a usb port, power up, the systems post boot up will find the drive and inform windows what hardware is installed.
When windows boots up, it will look at all the hardware and find the external hard drive, when windows finishes booting up you should be able to see the drive in my computer.

If you can't access your files,data recovery software can help.I used this one called Tenorshare Data Recovery to retrieve files off crashed HDD and it worked.
If needed,you can download it from https://www.any-data-recovery.com and scan your hard drive for free to preview whether your files can be recovered.