Need advice on disk-recovery software

[oldbrownhat]

Last fall my Seagate external HD crashed, which had all my CDs/mp3s and music videos on it. I think I had it all backed up on my network drive so restored to another drive from that but I suspect there may have been some other material that wasn't on the NAS. that I've forgotten about. Although I run Macs (but have a Dell Latitude PC as well) I had formatted it exFAT so anything could read it.

I ran the free version of Recuva on it at the time and it came up with some things but put it aside after that. Any suggestions?

 

[DWalt]

There is this, but I have no personal experience in using any of those mentioned. Top 10 Best Free Hard Drive Recovery Software (2023 Update) - EaseUS

Best to periodically do a full mirror backup of your entire HD onto an external hard drive while your computer is still working OK. That backs up everything on the old HD - all system files, application software, and created files. There are several free software packages that will handle normally needed HD backup and restoration functions. I use the free version of AOMEI Backupper, fairly simple to understand how it works. It has very complete instructions provided with it. A 1TB external HD will usually be more than adequate to hold a backup of everything stored on a home computer, and can be had for around $30.

Just for extra safety, I also copy most of my created files onto another hard drive.

 

[oldbrownhat]

I've heard of EaseUS; it seems to pop up everywhere. Based in China, which makes me a bit suspicious, although I'd do any scanning offline. I tried Disk Drill (Mac) just after the crash and it found some stuff, but the directory info was messed up and not all that useful, but that's what happens with disk failure/corruption.

My two Macs run Time Machine, so I have a few months of backup, plus I have a NAS, and in fact have just replaced my old WD MyCloud with a 6TB Synology DS220+. When I get the Synology fully up and running I'll have it back up my dedicated audio/video drive as well. In the past I had manually copied new audio/video data to the NAS, but I may have missed a few things, although nothing vital as far as I've noticed so far.

 

[outta_ammo]

Once a spinny drive starts to circle the drain there's only so much recovery SW can do. My primary Mac has two HDs directly connected. A 3TB drive with all of my media files, and a 4TB drive as the TimeMachine target that backs up both the internal and media drives.

While spinny drives can continue to work for 7-8 years or longer the odds start going against you at 3-4 years based on data center failure stats. I have taken to putting a reminder in my calendar to replace a mechanical drive 3 years after first use in a nearly-always-on use case. They're so cheap at this point it's just not worth the grief of waiting for one to fail.

The other thing to consider is that hard drives 'know things'. They're like "is this a bad time for you?" At the Apple Genius Bar we could always count on seeing HD failures immediately prior to college finals, and when major papers were due.

They're sentient. And evil.

 

[oldbrownhat]

Once a spinny drive starts to circle the drain there's only so much recovery SW can do. ...While spinny drives can continue to work for 7-8 years or longer the odds start going against you at 3-4 years based on data center failure stats...

I think this one was about 3-4 y.o. OTOH, the original 320gB HD on my 2009 iMac is still OK, although I did take the opportunity to replace it with an SSD a couple of summers ago "just because". And the drive in my WD MyCloud still tests OK and its's from 2013.

But yes, "they know things" and can indulge in evil behavior when you're least prepared for it

 

[pasound]

I've slowly upgraded "spinny" drives to SSD's over the past 3-4 years, in my constantly running computers, but have a few left to go in my backups. Have to forgo buying guns and start buying 1-2+ Tb hard drives for a while to finish this collection.

 

[DWalt]

SSDs are superior from a performance standpoint, but I choke on their price. I will stick with much less expensive conventional disc drives as I have not yet had a single problem with any of them. I believe I have seven external conventional disc drives at present, from 500GB to 2 TB. Most are used for backup storage, so they are not in continual daily use.

 

[TX-Dennis]

I'm in the camp that replaced hard drives as a precaution every 3 years. Now I'm all SSDs. They, too, have a finite lifespan, but no one is quite sure how long that may be. I'll probably replace them periodically as well.

My son recently bought an HP server with redundant power supplies, 2 16 core CPUs, 64GB of RAM, and I think 32TB of RAID drives. He set me up as a remote user, so I now back up my files to that as well as to an external hard drive.

I once recovered files from a bad flash drive with a program called Convar. It worked pretty well - about half were too corrupted to use, but at least some were saved. Not sure if that software still exists as this was well over 10 years ago.

There are professional hard drive recovery services that might be able to recover some or all of your files, but they are prohibitively expensive for most people.

 

[TX-Dennis]

SSDs are superior from a performance standpoint, but I choke on their price.

They have become much less expensive recently. If's been awhile since you looked, you might be pleasantly surprised. They're still a bit more expensive per GB than a hard drive, but they're getting closer. I think the (probably) enhanced reliability and (definite) extra speed are worth it. Not everyone will agree, of course.

 

[oldbrownhat]

...There are professional hard drive recovery services that might be able to recover some or all of your files, but they are prohibitively expensive for most people.

BTDT, many (25+) years ago. Whatever may be missing from my HD isn't remotely worth the $$$$ for that.

I looked up Convar and there is a 2020 review of PC Inspector File Recovery from Convar. Poor review, though.

As to SSD vs "old-fashioned" disk drives, yes, but the big ones are still pretty pricey. (Nimbus has a 100TB Exadrive for $40,000 )

But the storage commonly available now is pretty amazing. My gf got a new Dell business laptop a year or so ago from the university, with a 2TB flash drive, and has just added a second one for a total of 4TB on board. The first 2TB was getting full!

 

[DWalt]

They have become much less expensive recently. If's been awhile since you looked, you might be pleasantly surprised. They're still a bit more expensive per GB than a hard drive, but they're getting closer. I think the (probably) enhanced reliability and (definite) extra speed are worth it. Not everyone will agree, of course.

The least expensive new 2TB external SSDs from reputable makers seem to start at around $130-150 today. eBay has similar used ones listed at around $80-100, and that price begins to be tempting. About a month ago, I bought a new external Toshiba 2TB conventional hard disc drive for $45, all in, which is about a third of the corresponding new SSD price. Two years ago, I bought a no-name Chinese-made 1TB external SSD for around $25. Right out of the box, no bueno. At least I was able to return it for a refund.

Back in the mid-2000s we got a 1TB drive for graphic storage in the office where I was working, and everyone thought it was miraculous that a single drive could ever be that large. I do not remember the cost, but it was very expensive, several thousand at least. And it was not a SSD.

 

[oldbrownhat]

I tried two recommended free utilities, Puran File Recovery and Recuva. Did a deep scan, which took >24 hrs. Recuva seems to have got the best result, as it gives a lot of the file names as well, whereas Puran just gave a generic number like the first two entries shown below, which isn't all that useful.

I haven't gone through the list yet as there are a LOT of files (17,000 +) but I'm hoping that most of the stuff was also on my NAS, which I used to restore to my replacement drive. I'm mostly concerned with music files although there may also be some .mp4 videos that may not have been backed up elsewhere.

A Deep Scan brings up everything, including tons of metadata which is irrelevant, but better too much than too little.