HDD suddenly empty

[Toja60]

Hi all.

Today when I wanted to look after a recording, the
hard drive was completely empty except the time shift folder.
all other folders are gone, and the trash can is empty.
I has not seen any warnings or any signs.

I would be happy if I could get all or some
recordings back.

I suppose that the mount is ok due to these 2 folders I can see and browse.

Does anybody have an idea how to get the data back?

Kindly
Toja60

[roybach]

EasUS DATA recovery (free download) might help if you can connect the HDD to a Windows computer, depending on what format it is.

[abu baniaz]

How many storage devices do you have in total? (USB sticks/HDD)

Issue this command using putty and post back the results

df -Th

[Toja60]

Thank you both for the answers, I came home now and, I started up the box, and there is not so good sounds from the hard drive (mechanical ticking) which is quite bad, didn't hear any before...
so I think the disc is gone.

Did a df -Th

root@vuultimo4k:~# df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root ext4 3.5G 219.8M 3.3G 6% /
devtmpfs devtmpfs 781.0M 4.0K 781.0M 0% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 64.0K 0 64.0K 0% /media
tmpfs tmpfs 789.1M 296.0K 788.8M 0% /var/volatile

The hard drive is a 3 TB, and it seems not to be in this list?

I will remove it and put in another drive now and try to analyse the fault one.

[Toja60]

Hi again,

FYI, the disk is probably dead, spins up with these ticking, and after 10-15 sec it turns off.

I did connect it to a pc, and it was the same result, so badly boring with all the recordings gone

The disk is a "Seagate BarraCuda 3TB 2.5" Serial ATA-600 5400rpm" with warranty left,
BUT who wants to put in same sh*t again?

Cheers!

[adm]

Hi all.

Today when I wanted to look after a recording, the
hard drive was completely empty except the time shift folder.
all other folders are gone, and the trash can is empty.
I has not seen any warnings or any signs.

I would be happy if I could get all or some
recordings back.

I suppose that the mount is ok due to these 2 folders I can see and browse.

Does anybody have an idea how to get the data back?

Kindly
Toja60

Are you syre that the HDD is mounted? If its become unmounted you may actually be looking at the contents of a USB stick if you have one plugged into the box.
Menu -> Information -> Devices to see what is being detected

I've had a hard disk go missing a few times in the past few years. First try turning the box off at the mains for 30 seconds after putting it into deep standby first. In my case the HDD was remounted automatically on mains switch on, otherwise Menu -> Setup -> Vix -> Mount Manager

[Toja60]

Sorry for that I forgot to tell you, but I doesn't have any other disks or USB sticks connected except the hard drive.

I removed the hard drive and did a check on my pc, and it doesn't shows up at all in the disk manager.
It spins up, ticking and shuts down, the drive is getting warm after a while, but doesn't spin.

I'm sure it has given up ...

[Toja60]

I connected the drive again to be sure that it's dead, it did not appear in the mounting handler, or it's not visible in the info\devices...

Thanks anyway for the support!

[cactikid]

Sometimes linux format is not seen by windows,but a noisy ticking hdd does not sound good as i had that on old pc and hdd is bust.

[Toja60]

Yes, but normally the disk shows up in the disk management even if you can't access the EXT* file system.

I've also been unlucky with a lot of hard drives over the years in computers, but it was the first time in any sat-box.

Anyway it's really boring

[roybach]

Try EaseUS Partition Master before you bin it, I have successfuly used it to recover problematic HDD in the past. Again it's a free download so nothing to lose.

[john doe]

i also have used EaseUS partition successfully to recover my HDD

[Toja60]

I tried again on a W7, the device manager finds it, but it is disconnected when the disk stops after 10-15 seconds.
If I could keep it spinning then maybe it was possible to use the software.

And because the hard disk is not visible in the mount manager on two boxes, it's probably not well enough to be saved.

It probably has bad heads or failing heads when I compared the sound at this address:

https://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

[Willo3092]

I've had some success with putting a faulty hdd in the freezer overnight (in a sealed plastic bag) to recover data. I suppose it depends on what's wrong with it but it may be worth a try.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/112050/recovering-data-from-a-damaged-hard-drive-the-freezer-trick

There are a few tools that let you mount an ext4 disk in windows

https://superuser.com/questions/37512/how-to-read-ext4-partitions-on-windows

[Toja60]

Thank you Willo3092!

I know about the freezer way, and will have a try

I will tell you all about the result next week!