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A good friend of mine sent me a hard drive via mail. It contained a lot of videos that he just recently put on the folder. So I plug in the hard drive and Windows says that I have to format the disc because it can't read anything from it. Obviously I did not proceed but soon realized that I need to recover the data from the disc.

Why Windows couldnt read anything from that drive remains a mystery. Maybe it got corrupted during transport via mail (even though it was a secure transfer and that packaging was soft and safe).

Anyway, I started my go-to recovery software EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. Already after a few minutes of scanning the expected folder structure with the videos appears in the preview.

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Even the files with "size", "modified date", "file name", etc. pop up.

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However, when I wait until the scan is finished, which lasted ~10 hours, exactly these folders disappear again for some reason. I then started the recovery process again and stopped it after the files and folders appear in the results and immediately choose to recover them. This also does not work however. The progress bar halts at 1% for as long as an hour (before I cancel it) and nothing happens.

My question is: Why are the video files found and listed with all details, but I can't actually recover them?

I also tried "Stellar Data Recovery" (listed the folder, but not files inside), and "Active Partition Recovery Ultimate" to no avail.

Can you recommend what I can do? Any other tools?

UPDATE: Testdisk finds the desired folder "Sugpall", but when I recover it, it says "Copy done! 0 ok, 0 failed". So nothing was inside again.

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UPDATE 2: Another image from Testdisk.

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beta
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    "Why Windows couldnt read anything from that drive remains a mystery." – How do you connect the drive? How did your friend connect the drive? Is a USB enclosure involved? For possible explanation see [this question](https://superuser.com/q/985305/432690). On the other hand the fact you cannot recover the files may indicate the drive itself is not healthy. What does SMART say? (use CrystalDiskInfo or similar program). – Kamil Maciorowski Dec 03 '21 at 09:34
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    I connect the driva via an USB-to-SATA bridge. CrystalDiskInfo gives a yellow warning for C5 and C6 (bad sectors). see log here: https://pastebin.com/d0iAQWYS – beta Dec 03 '21 at 09:50
  • Do I have a chance with Testdisk? Or anything else? – beta Dec 03 '21 at 09:50
  • Oh and thanks for your linked question. Does this mean, I may fix it, by directly inserting the disk to my computer and not connecting via USB? – beta Dec 03 '21 at 09:52
  • (1) Is the linked log right? It says `Drive Letter : G:` as if Windows was able to mount it. And raw values for bad sectors are all zero. (2) Depending on how your friend used to connect the drive and what your USB-to-SATA bridge does, connecting directly via SATA may or may not help. It's certainly a good idea to at least try. – Kamil Maciorowski Dec 03 '21 at 09:55
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    Yes, sorry, the linked log is correct. What I wrote was wrong. The drive seems good from SMART. – beta Dec 03 '21 at 09:57
  • Indeed it is mounted as G (I didn't recognize that before), but when I want to enter it via Windows Explorer, Windows says "Wrong parameter". – beta Dec 03 '21 at 09:58
  • Tonight I will try to mount it directly from inside a computer. Please see also my 2nd Testdisk screenshot above. It says "Bootup sector status" is "bad". Does this add anything to the current knowledge? – beta Dec 03 '21 at 09:59
  • Oh and one more thing. This is how windows currently sees the drive: https://imgur.com/a/EGjp56t so G: is only the first part of the drive. The big part is "not assigned". – beta Dec 03 '21 at 10:01
  • Interestingly, avoiding the USB-Bridge did the trick. – beta Dec 04 '21 at 15:48

1 Answers1

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It turned out that I could easily read the data on the drive by avoiding the USB brigde and connecting it directly to the internal SATA port of (an)other computer.

beta
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    For the record and for future users with similar problems: the issue was *probably* like [*Why is my USB drive showing corrupted data when plugged as an internal SATA drive?*](https://superuser.com/q/985305/432690) but the other way around. Read [this answer](https://superuser.com/a/985330/432690) to understand the essence of the problem. Linux users may benefit from [this answer of mine](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/511256/108618). – Kamil Maciorowski Dec 04 '21 at 16:25