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I'm trying to fix (and hopefully recover files from) a USB hard drive belonging to one of my roommates which suddenly stopped working. The storage on the drive is not recognized on any computer. Trying to access it on mine, here is what I've discovered:

  • The drive does not mount on my computer (this much was expected)
  • The drive is not recognized by partitioning tools* (unexpected - I figured it got corrupted somehow and would just need to be reformatted, as I've done with numerous flash drives in the past)
    • There's a peculiar addendum to this: though the drive is not recognized by partitioning tools, loading up GParted causes the drive to show up in /dev/sdb where it didn't before
  • SMART analysis of the drive fails, yielding no information about the device
  • My computer recognizes that the drive is plugged in and what it is and the drive lights up, so it's probably not the cable

Some additional details:

This is the output from smartctl -a /dev/sdb:

Read Device Identity failed: scsi error device will be ready soon

and running sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb -T permissive just yields a bunch of "[No Information Found]"s.

The drive does not work in Windows either. Though Windows insists the drive is working perfectly, no partitions are visible and attempting to initialize the drive with Windows's disk management tools just gives an I/O error.

Copying directly from /dev/sdb yields nothing.

The drive registers on my laptop as a "Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd M3 Portable Hard Drive 1TB".

The drive beeps when connected to my computer.

So, my question:

Is this drive salvageable? If so, how? And is it likely I'll be able to restore the partitions and recover data from it, or is getting the drive working the best I can hope for?

Dylan
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    this drive is in a external case? did you remove it from the case and connect directly with (Sata?) internal cable? Does it make a noise at all when trying to access it / mount it? You didnt mention if it was SSD or not.... – Logman Mar 22 '14 at 18:51
  • The drive is in an external case but doesn't appear to be openable, not inclined to start tearing it apart. It does in fact make a noise, I should have mentioned: it beeps briefly when connected. Not promising. And it's a standard SATA drive. – Dylan Mar 22 '14 at 18:56
  • Does it make a "clicking" noise? if yes, it's mechanical failure, it's very hard to save. If not, remove it and plug it directly to a computer. – Filipe YaBa Polido Mar 22 '14 at 18:59
  • Nope, no clicking noise thankfully. That was the very first thing I asked as I've lost a few drives that way. I can't remove it from the case as far as I can tell. – Dylan Mar 22 '14 at 19:00
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    @Dylan - You have nothing to lose at this point. You will need to remove it from the enclosure to try ANY of the ideas we might have. If your not willing to do this then the drive is dead based on what you have described. – Ramhound Mar 22 '14 at 19:28
  • As the case is completely sealed (no screws or anything, just enclosed in plastic) and I think it'll be difficult to get the drive out without a high risk of damaging it, we're going to see about acquiring a different cable and trying that, as apparently that can sometimes be the cause despite the acknowledgement of the connection on both sides. I would really prefer to try any non-invasive techniques possible unless it's clear there's no other solution. This will be a couple days probably but I'll post back with results. – Dylan Mar 22 '14 at 20:38
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    @Dylan chances of a cable failure, would rarely ever happen unless the cable ends are physically damaged and it would be visible. The case probably has tabs and pop in/out when you pry. Hold it up to a bright light. But a case can be replaced for $5-$10, new cable can cost as much. The hd and contents are another thing all together. – Logman Mar 23 '14 at 00:23

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