Data Recovery External Drive Software
Why would an external hard drive stop working without any apparent reason?
I have a 500GB external hard drive which has just stopped working and most probably I have lost all my data. It never fell nor was dropped. I was simply accessing a pictures folder with ACDSee when it just stopped working. Bought it about a year ago. It says “Rock Mobile Disk” on it’s container, while the actual hard drive is manufactured by Western Digital. I have tried many data recovery software programs none have been able to even start to recover. I have been getting I/O error in sector 0. If it’s mechanical problem is there anyway I could fix it?
I have mounted the drive directly onto my PC. Had the same problem.
I/O error in sector 0 usually means that the MBR is thrashed.
If there is a bad sector 0 then the drive is probably going to remain directly inaccessible. You might be lucky and find that the mbr is simply corrupted. If your computer recognizes your drive (ie. if the drive is listed under disk management and/or in you device manager) but the drive shows nothing but unallocated space then this is most likely the problem.To fix it you need specialized soft like http://www.ptdd.com/mbr.htm or http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hdm-personal/ – what i use.
If the first sector is actually bad due to a surface defect and this is reported with the manufacturer’s utility then you are into recovery of the data from a drive that will remain inaccessible by normal means = a lot of money.
USB drive data recovery software