Multiple drive failure after system upgrade, advice for first attempt at ddrescue

whitesky

New member
Previously I ran a 120Gb SSD for Windows/apps, and three mechanical WB Black 1Tbs for storage. After upgrading my SSD to a new Samsung 870 EVO 2Tb and reinstalled Windows, I began plugging back in the old HDDs and assigning their drive letters and user permissions.

Things were ok for a few days before drives were hitching/freezing upon browsing folders. Finally after trying to save a file in Photoshop to Documents, everything froze and required a hard shutdown.

After that, things started getting worse and my drives started not appearing in either Disk Manager or sometimes Bios, and booting Windows would show incorrect drive letter assignments or at times even show the drives as "Unknown" or needing to be initialized in Disk Manager.

Now only completely powering down and unplugging/power cycling these drives will allow them to be recognized in BIOS/Windows, but after what I believe to be encountering a bad sector (from researching online), the drive locks up, goes to 100% Disk Activity with 0 read/write, and requires another power down + unplugging cables. Attempting to reboot once this occurs without doing the complete power down causes Windows to infinite load on logo screen.

All attempts to backup data from within Windows has failed or caused disks to become even more unresponsive.

I can only afford to use professional local service on one of my drives, the most crucial with important files. The other two, I am now considering ddrescue and the tutorial from Jared.

My biggest questions:
1. How the heck did three mechanical HDD's fail the exact same way within 24 hrs of plugging into the new system? Yes two were 8-9 years old but the third was only a year old. Something just doesn't add up.
2. Is my system even safe? Did my Sata ports, PSU, or something else get wonky and are now screwing up attached drives? Oddly the new OS SSD (Port 1) is perfect).
3. If it's true that Windows will indefinitely hang with 100% disk activity when reading bad sectors, why didn't this happen before the upgrade? Or did the upgrade itself cause it?

ddrescue:
I'm looking to try this on the least important HDD. I do have a spare Samsung 870 EVO 2TB, which was going to be dedicated to games and 3D modeling. I'm willing to use that as a blank destination drive.

1. If I do a disk to disk clone (1Tb HDD -> 2Tb SSD), will the contents be accessible once I go back to Windows? Or do I need to then transfer everything onto yet another drive or go through some sort of conversion/software? The 2Tb SSD is just a blank initialized Simple Volume in Windows.
2. The SSD is technically big enough to hold data from all three mechanicals, since each was only filled to about half capacity. Can I do a disk to disk clone for each drive and have the files dumped successively on the receiving SSD? Or do I need to move them off each time onto another drive first?
3. If this or another recommendation were to be successful, would I then have to scan and repair the receiving drive to make it fully usable? (Due to bad sectors in the original disk)

Thanks for any help!!
 

pclab

Moderator
If you gonna contact a DR lab, send all the drives for an analysis. Maybe it will an afordable solution and you will get the data from all of the drives.
If you see that it's too expensive, then yes, try do mess around with ddrescue or whatever.
But only on last resort, because you can do more harm than good messing with the drives
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
If you have three 1Tb WD black drives that are all acting up in roughly the same way, recovery might not be that expensive. We usually offer a bulk rate discount if you get all three recovered at the same time. If you are not in a rush, and none of the heads have failed, it may be around $945 in total.
 
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