Data missing...sorta

[MrHood22]

My QNAP somewhat failed so I have to pull the data off. Basically to use it again I must reformat the drives but in the mean time the data is accessible via FTP. I have about 5TB of data so I bought 2 x 3TB drives and have begun the painful process of transferring 5TB of data @ 3.5Mib/s (max transfer speed in this situation).

I filled up the first 3TB drive and I moved to the second. There is something I needed on the first drive so I plugged it back in however 1 of my 2 folders is empty. Windows 8 reads the drive as "212gb free out of 2.72TB". Folder 1 reads as empty and when I click on it it says 'folder is empty'. Folder 2 says it has about 980gb which sounds right. Within Folder 2 there are probably 50 other folders that I randomly checked and they appear to be fine.

When I plug it in to my Macbook it says it can't read the hard drive. When I plug it in to my Windows 7 machine it reads the drive, opens Folder 2 fine and says Folder 1 is not accessible. At first it did not read the drive but I re-plugged in the USB cable and it found it BUT it said it needed to initialize it. I re-plugged it in the last time it read Folder 2 fine and said Folder 1 wasn't accessible. I tried to transfer ~50gb out of Folder 2 but it froze and isn't visible in Windows anymore. After I'm done posting this I'm going to replug it in again.

The two new 3TB drives are Seagate NAS drives.


Any thoughts on what I can do to avoid wasting another week transferring this data for the second time?

 

[Nenu]

Get all the data off that you can ""if it doesnt sound like its killing the drive as you do it"", then look to start recovery procedures.
Basically if the drive has a bad problem, how much can you trust it to retain any data that you need?
So get what you can off it asap before trying to fix the drive, in case extended use of the drive finishes it off because it is truly dieing.

A good utility to start is HDD Regenerator or Spinrite.
They fix low level problems such as data in bad sectors, repairing a damaged format etc.
Low level tools dont overwrite data so everything remains intact.
Spinrite can do more than fix low level problems, I havent used it in a long time, but I have only heard praise for it.
https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

Even if the drives seek head is making some horrible noises, the above tools may be able to rescue it.
I had a drive that didnt do anything from power on but click constantly.
HDD Regenerator restored the drive and it worked fine after.
Spinrite is just as capable at low level repair.

The fault occured when the drive was used at too low a temperature and the drive was written to (the platter hadnt warmed up enough).
This put data in the wrong place because the platter was too small for the head to correctly position, corrupting some of the data already there.
It must have screwed the FAT at least due to how it sounded and it was unusable.


Once low level repair has been completed, dont do any more repairs, otherwise you may overwrite data that no longer has an entry in the FAT. Its possible just the FAT was corrupted but the data is still there making it just like deleted data.
First see if the data can now be copied off.

If not, use tools that can pull deleted data off the drive and write it to another drive.
A decent free util is Recuva, but it will gather a TON of data that wont be useful.
However there is a good chance you will find at least some of what you are looking for if not all of it, as long as it hasnt been overwritten.
https://www.piriform.com/recuva

Unfortunately corrupt hard drives can be a pita.
The alternative is to send it to a recovery centre.

 

[MrHood22]

I actually started doing the Windows Drive Scanner (sorry, forget the real name and I can't check since I'm on my Mac) and as I walked out of the room I turned the light off. Unfortunately that drive was plugged in to the outlet linked to the light switch. Luckily as I was turning it off I moved my hand back up to turn it on (with letting go of the switch). It was only a blink of the eye but still, I know that's not helping!

Anyway, now I can see my movies so I'm starting to transfer stuff off. It only has 200gb+ free which puts it in the red under 'My Computer' so I'm going to lighten the load a bit and see how it responds. All the data is still on my QNAP but the reason I'm not quick to reformat this troubled 3TB is because that would mean I'd have to wait at least another week to transfer all the data back on (@ 3.5Mib/s).

On Tuesday I'm going to contact Seagate to see their input. Ideally I'd like to transfer all the data to my 2 x 3TB, reformat my NAS, move the data back on, and then replace 2 of the drives in my QNAP with 2 of the new 3TB.

 

[timta2]

Ideally I'd like to transfer all the data to my 2 x 3TB, reformat my NAS, move the data back on, and then replace 2 of the drives in my QNAP with 2 of the new 3TB.

I hope you are working on a new backup strategy, so that you can avoid disasters like this in the future. RAID is never a backup. I learned the hard way. Good luck!

 

[Aesma]

How are the 3TB connected ? If USB enclosure, are you sure that enclosure is 3TB ready ? If SATA, are you sure the controller/mobo is 3TB ready ?

A few years ago Apple couldn't read NTFS drives natively (Microsoft's fault), today I don't know. There are tools to read it anyway.

Personally I wouldn't trust the drive at this point, but I'm not familiar with QNAP and your failure mode, are you 100% confident your data is safe on the QNAP ? If yes then I would start the copy again on another drive.

You're going to need more drives anyway for your new backup strategy.