[stryker412]

I'm at my wit's end here, please help. Before I do the dreaded freezer method I want to make sure there's nothing else to try. Windows sees the drive but it comes up that it needs to be formatted and is in RAW format. The drive makes a crunching noise when first starting up but sounds fine afterwards.

So far I've:
1) Attempted recovery using a USB SATA dock with EaseUS, Recuva, and GetDataBack. (some data was recovered but most of the files were not usable)
2) booted up with a linux recovery disc and ran ddrescue (image was zero bytes after 21hrs)
3) tried TestDisk (no partition discovered)


All I need is to recover ONE file off the HDD (~4GB). Is there anything else I can try before I throw it in the freezer?

[FastMHz]

If Windows is seeing the drive as RAW, freezing it most likely won't do anything - this means the filesystem is corrupt, or the partition table has disappeared. Since TestDisk didn't work, try DMDE.

[continuum]

Yep, if Testdisk doesn't see a recoverable partition, you may be SOL.

If you do try DMDE, let us know what you find!

[stryker412]

I gave up on the drive after pretty much everything I did resulted in no data or unusable data being recovered. The drive was RMA'ed.