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[Floydoid]

Today I had to remove one of the SATA drives from my machine - the one I use for backups and archive storage. Anyway Windows was so long booting up this morning, even trying a scan and repair of the errant drive before getting to the desktop, but Windows had more or less ground to a halt because it was struggling to recognise the drive, so physical removal was the quick fix solution.  I found my old hard drive USB caddy and popped it in there to try it, but once again Windows was not recognising it and things ground to a halt.

So my question is, what are my options if Windows won't recognise it to the point where I could try some recovery and repair tools?  I'd like to be able to recover the data as some of it is quite valuable and I've accumulated it over a long period of time.

Nobody backs up their backups, right?

[Alex Atkin UK]

The point of a backup is its in addition to your main copy of the data.  If it has data not found anywhere else, its not a backup its an archive and yes you should keep a backup of that.

I mean technically if its important you should keep more than one backup, but once you have a lot of storage like I do its really not practical as my backup drives alone cost as much as a decent PC.

[Floydoid]

I think it's a lesson learned.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Sorry I can't offer actual help, I haven't had to attempt data recovery in decades (fortunately) but I have lost a LOT of photos over the years from CD/DVDs that failed, its heartbreaking.

[tubaman]

Sad news 
The symptoms you've described suggest a failure on the mechanical side, which in my experience is what usually kills spinning disks.
There are companies out there that could doubtless recover the data but it won't be a cheap exercise.
Only you will know if the expense would be justified.

[licquorice]

Try running a Linux distro from a live DVD and see if you can mount the drive from that and recover some files.

[Floydoid]

There are companies out there that could doubtless recover the data but it won't be a cheap exercise.

This is what I fear.

[Floydoid]

I don't fancy tinkering with Linux - I was wondering if there are recovery tools that can run from a command prompt - what we used to call MS-DOS. But maybe it's not possible to do so outside of Windows, because as I explained mounting the drive causes Windows to virtually grind to a halt.

[licquorice]

No tinkering involved, you just run it from a Live DVD or USB stick without installing. Nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying it.
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/try-ubuntu-before-you-install#1-getting-started

[Floydoid]

I still wouldn't have a clue where to start.

[parkdale]

Data Recovery https://www.runtime.org  Get Data back pro is the one I have used for about 15 yrs, you can run a scan to see if any data is recoverable before buying. The license is life time, $79
Also run HD sentinel https://www.hdsentinel.com to see how bad the disk is first. Still Functional after trial period.

There are some tricks to getting data off failing disks, a lot depends on the failure point.

[Floydoid]

You're all missing the point - how can test software be run when the drive is so knackered it slows Windows down to literally a snail's pace because it struggles to recognise it? It's not even possible to rt-click on it for the context menu.

I give up.

[Alex Atkin UK]

You're all missing the point - how can test software be run when the drive is so knackered it slows Windows down to literally a snail's pace because it struggles to recognise it? It's not even possible to rt-click on it for the context menu.

I give up.

Windows is the worst place to attempt it as it will try to access it on boot.  Linux wont try to auto-mount it so you can work on it at a lower level.  But yes, if it partly works it will take a looooong time to attempt to recover any files.

[Floydoid]

I think I'm just going to cut my losses and tun, and take it as a hard lesson learned. A lot of the stuff I can probably find again, but it will just take time. In the mean time I've ordered a replacement drive which will become my main data drive, and my current data drive will become my archiving drive. The most important stuff will also get further backed up, probably to DVD-ROM.

[d2d4j]