Question re: possible contents of $BadClus file

Recuva
1

Here's my situation:

I had a 1 TB external hard drive whose very badly-designed USB connection featured little metal prongs that sat inside the casing and plugged in to the USB cable. Unfortunately, being very weak and ill-considered, several of them broke off into the USB cable itself, such that the drive would no longer receive power or a connection to the computer. I'm pretty sure the drive was near full when this occurred, though I'm not 100% sure, as I let it sit for a while before trying to fix it.

I took it to my local computer store and they put it in a new enclosure. They informed me that it powered on, but behaved as if it had no data and had never been initialized before. Obviously not what I wanted to hear.

I got Recuva, and ran a deep scan. Initially I didn't know I had to specify that it should look for non-deleted files in cases of a damaged or formatted drive. That being the case, that initial scan turned up 10 flv files and one mov file ranging between about 200 MB and 1.9 GB. This would be consistent with some of the smaller videos that I would have saved to the drive, though they would have almost universally have been in MPG format. I was able to quickly recover one of the flv files, and got it to play on Windows Media Player despite the incorrect extension. It consitituted a portion of a boxing card that I had saved, though the quality appears to have diminished. Hardly unwatchable, but I doubt it was as good as the original version. The scan also ignored 97 files...which sounded like it might be consistent, give or take, with the number of videos I might have saved on the drive. I believe the partial video I played from the recovery was most likely a working segment of a larger video that I later combined and saved as a larger file on the drive, but which to this point I haven't found.

After I realized that my scan hadn't necessarily looked for files that I hadn't deleted, I re-ran a deep scan with the necessary option clicked. It showed what I believe to be the same flv and mov files from earlier. It also turned up quite a few mp3 files. There are several versions of a file that has the name "Richard Vaughan.mp3," which is not a file or a person's name that I recognize. I haven't yet tried to recover or open them. There are a lot of other mp3 files without names (just given numbers). I don't remember if I had backed up my mp3 library to this drive or not, so these may or may not be mp3 files that I had anything to do with. With one exception, the largest file of any kind that the scan turned up was 1.82 GB (one of the recovered deleted videos, I think). THis tells me that most or all of my desired video files are not listed, since I would certainly have many that exceeded 5 GB, and a few that exceeded 10.

The one exceptionally large file is the $BadClus file, which is 932 GB (very possibly the amount of space I'd filled on the drive when it broke). This file was created and modified on 3/13/2014, which was most likely the date on which the computer store had initialized the drive. This makes me wonder (and hope) whether, if I were to recover the $BadClus file to another external drive, it might magically reveal all the currently missing videos, etc. or, if it's possible but not that simple, what additional steps I might need to take to recover them. It just seems odd that files I deleted would be fine and unharmed, while ones I did not delete would be lost forever.

Thanks very much for any help!

2

Hi cowboydan, and welcome to the forum.

Firstly, an explanation here as to what the "$BadClus" file actually is, and I'm afraid it probably isnt what you think it is ...

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=21594&do=findComment&comment=136074

Secondly, it appears that your drive is thankfully recognized by Windows and from your description the file system is recognized as RAW and therefore, as your local store discovered, the drive appears to require formatting.

In actuality, it's possible that the drive simply has a screwed up MBR (Master Boot Record) meaning there isn't any file or partition information there for Windows to read and ascertain what is actually on the drive. Also meaning that all your files may still be on the drive and intact.

I say may be because I can't be sure until it's been looked at by a partition managing program.

If you want to investigate this possibility, then I would suggest downloading "MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition" (Free), and then use it firstly to see how it displays this drive (probably unallocated space), and then secondly to search for a missing partition or partitions.

Even if you haven't partitioned the drive it will contain one partition, and then MiniTools may be able to find it, restore it, and write the correct partition information to the MBR.

From what you say the drive hasn't actually been used (written to) since it got screwed, so it's well worth having a look at this option.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Partition-Wizard-Home-Edition.shtml

3

Thank you Dennis. I downloaded that program as you suggested. I ran a quick scan with the partition recover wizard tool (is that what you wanted me to do?), and it showed the following:

File System: NTFS

Label: New Volume

Starting LBA: 63

Ending LBA: 1953520064

Used size: 115.41 MB

Size: 931.51 GB

Status: Existing

I don't know if the 115 MB is the sum of the various misceallaneous mp3, gif, png, etc. files that Recuva was able to find on it, or what that might be. Obviously I'd say it hasn't yet found a significant portion of my Data. I'm currently running the full scan to see if that will come up with more.

Let me know if there's anything I could be doing in the mean time. Thanks!

4

Yes, that was the idea. Just to do a scan and see what MiniTools came up with.

I've had experience myself on a few occasions of a messed up MBR caused the loss of partitions on a drive. MiniTools has always, so far, found these partitions intact and restored them, which is why I think this approach is always worth a try.

The result you got however wasn't what I expected given that your drive was quite full.

Can you post a screenshot of the MiniTools main interface as shown here ...

post-8751-0-00571600-1395329149_thumb.jpg

... with your drive attached so we can see exactly what is displayed.

Bear in mind that at this stage we aren't writing to the drive so this wouldn't affect the other option of scanning for your files.

One step at a time though, I'll await that screenshot.

:)

5

Here it is. I'm sure you can tell, but New Volume (E) is the one that's in play.

post-69069-0-28224500-1395332569_thumb.jpg

6

Thanks for that.

I took it to my local computer store and they put it in a new enclosure. They informed me that it powered on, but behaved as if it had no data and had never been initialized before. Obviously not what I wanted to hear.

I assumed from the above info, that the shop had placed the drive into an enclosure, discovered the state of the file system, and returned it to you as they had received it. It probably would have been better if they had done that.

I would now say that it does appear to have been formated to NTFS. The fact that you do actually pick up a few files with a scan may suggest that it was a "Quick Format", but a few remnant files may be possible to find after a "Full Format".

I've never scanned a fully formatted drive to find out, and others on here may be able to confirm that one way or the other.

So, finding and restoring the original partition may be no go now, (maybe try Lazesoft Recovery below for a second opinion on that), so it's down to getting what you can from a scan, and I can give you a couple of alternatives to look at as it is possible to get different results with different programs.

Obviously Recuva is my first suggestion, and to scan with everything checked except maybe "Show files found in hidden system directories". A Deep Scan of course if the quick one didn't turn up much, and with a drive that size, it may take some time.

Secondly, have a try with "LazeSoft Data Recovery" which has file and partition recovery options.

Accessing the ‘Data Recovery’ option you can easily recover deleted or lost files from a partition or removable media, as well as recover lost or damaged partitions.

http://www.lazesoft.com/lazesoft-windows-data-recovery-free.html

And finally, in case I've hit a senior moment and overlooked any possibilities, I would be happy for any of the other guys to contribute if they have something different to suggest.

7

Okay I'll look into that once a couple scans I'm currently running are finished. The full scan from the partition wizard is still only about half done...I'd say it has at least 12 hours left. It did just find, within the last few minutes, two 3 MB partitions labeled "Boot" whose status it lists as lost/deleted. Could these be the key to finding all my data again? If so, might they be recoverable despite the lost/deleted tag? I'm sure I'll find out when the scan completes, but I'm a bit on edge waiting for that moment.

I'm also running the minitool power data recovery free addition. That scan will be done soon. It's found/identified hundreds of thousands of files and 3 boot records. I guess we'll see what that turns up.

8

Just remember that MiniTools Data Recovery Free has a 1GB recovery limitation, whereas Lazesoft Data Recovery has no such restriction.

two 3 MB partitions labeled "Boot" whose status it lists as lost/deleted

I'm sorry but I have no idea what they represent although others may.

One final thought, and apologies if you already know this, but DON'T restore any files to the drive you're recovering from.

Some people still mistakenly do that.

9

Windows stumbled and fell when booting,

and it converted my Secondary HDD from GPT to MBR

A Data Recovery Tool is told by Windows that this drive is MBR format with RAW files.

It detects most of the partitions which I fondly remember.

It also reports several 3 MB partitions which are possibly its best guesses of whatever it was between GPT partitions.

10

Dennis,

Power Data Recovery found the missing partition and all the files I imagine are on it, so at least I have that in my back pocket for $69 (sure as hell beats $1000+ for a clean room). I'm running the Lazesoft scan as I write this, so hopefully that will find it and hook me up for free.

I wasn't sure if I could recover to the original drive or not...thought perhaps it was doable since it's all theoretically there already, but I certainly wouldn't have done that without checking first. Glad you saved me the trouble of asking.

I guess I need to wait for my warranty replacement of ANOTHER defective Buffalo Hard Drive to reach me so I'll have somewhere to put the data. I'll let you know how Lazesoft does.

11

I hope that's as positive as it sounds. Fingers crossed for you.

I've recovered many corrupt drives over the years, mine and neighbours, and so far I've managed to do it with the free versions of software.

Usually with MiniTools, but I have had success with LazeSoft, as has Alan, who posted above with his suggestion as to what the 3MB partitions may be.

I didn't intend sending you down the road of spending money as we try to do everything on here with free software to avoid folk having to shell out large sums for data recovery, but it's all relative to how important that data is to you and of course in the end, it's your choice. :)

As long as you are in no mad hurry to use that drive, and please don't as you will overwrite your lost files, here's some other stuff for you to try with a view to recovering the partition ...

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/EASEUS-Partition-Recovery.shtml (Free)

This will also search for lost or deleted partitions with no restrictions, but bear in mind again, that the Data Recovery section included in the download has a 1GB free recovery limitation.

I'm suggesting this for the Partition Recovery option, but it's your choice what you do with the other.

:)

EDIT: Almost forgot, just to emphasise, never, ever, restore to the same drive as you are recovering from. Windows will not restore the files to their original locations the way the Recycle Bin does. It will restore them to any space allocated as free to use.

You WILL overwrite files you are trying to recover.