Among my current PC problems, is a large amount of data loss (my entire ‘Pictures’ folder containing a life time’s worth of pics!
I reformatted an M.2 Sata drive (Samsung 850 EVO), knowing I had backups of all its data. Ha! The backup was on a WD 2Tb HDD which, when plugged in, reports a ‘SMART’ failure and refuses to give up any of its data.

I’ve now tried no less than SEVEN free ‘data recovery’ programs, none of which have found more than just an old system folder with nothing in it.

Is even worth trying to continue?  Lots of research suggests the data is still present, as I’ve not used the drive for anything else, and it was only a ‘quick format’.

What are your thoughts ladies and gents?

 

27 minutes ago, Dougal said:

What are your thoughts ladies and gents?

Perhaps You should consider contacting one of the DATA RECOVERY services suggested by Western Digital.
(Some companies won't charge if no data is recovered)

M.2 or SSD drives are different, and almost imposible to recover.

Not to add fire to Your problem. But I don't trust any SSD or HDD, so I always keep at least 2 copies of all my important data.

Edited December 14, 20187 yr by RamonB

After you reformat an SSD, the Win 10 TRIM/DEALLOCATE and the SSD internal garbage collection processes go to work, reflashing the now-unused data blocks to zeroes to get them ready to be rewritten.  After a reformat, ALL of the data blocks are flagged by TRIM for erasure, and depending on how your SSD schedules its garbage collection (some wait for periods of low or no disk activity, some interleave it with regular read/write activity), that data is going to disappear somewhere between quickly and very quickly as the blocks are erased in the normal internal GC process.

Your best bet is to send that 2TB backup drive off to a professional data recovery service...they may be able to remove the platters and recover the data.

Regards

38 minutes ago, Dougal said:

Among my current PC problems, is a large amount of data loss (my entire ‘Pictures’ folder containing a life time’s worth of pics!
I reformatted an M.2 Sata drive (Samsung 850 EVO), knowing I had backups of all its data. Ha! The backup was on a WD 2Tb HDD which, when plugged in, reports a ‘SMART’ failure and refuses to give up any of its data.

I’ve now tried no less than SEVEN free ‘data recovery’ programs, none of which have found more than just an old system folder with nothing in it.

Is even worth trying to continue?  Lots of research suggests the data is still present, as I’ve not used the drive for anything else, and it was only a ‘quick format’.

What are your thoughts ladies and gents?

 

Phil, there is a Data Recovery company that when I worked for an IT retailer we used to use. Very proven results, but you'd be looking in the £500+ charge to recover a HDD in lab conditions. I attended a course of theirs, and they were professional. The ones that nailed a certain singer synonymous with 'shine'.

Having lost data too, I know your pain.

Edited December 14, 20187 yr by vc10man

50 minutes ago, Dougal said:

What are your thoughts ladies and gents?

Not sure if this was amongst the recovery software you tried, but it has worked for me on the few occasions that I lost data which other programs couldn't find - Data Recovery Wizard: https://www.easeus.com/

Edited December 14, 20187 yr by vortex681

28 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

Not sure if this was amongst the recovery software you tried, but it has worked for me on the few occasions that I lost data which other programs couldn't find - Data Recovery Wizard: https://www.easeus.com/

One of the first I tried, as I also use use their free partition software, which is excellent.

53 minutes ago, w6kd said:

After you reformat an SSD, the Win 10 TRIM/DEALLOCATE and the SSD internal garbage collection processes go to work, reflashing the now-unused data blocks to zeroes to get them ready to be rewritten.  After a reformat, ALL of the data blocks are flagged by TRIM for erasure, and depending on how your SSD schedules its garbage collection (some wait for periods of low or no disk activity, some interleave it with regular read/write activity), that data is going to disappear somewhere between quickly and very quickly as the blocks are erased in the normal internal GC process.

Your best bet is to send that 2TB backup drive off to a professional data recovery service...they may be able to remove the platters and recover the data.

Regards

Wow!  Thanks Bob.  I had absolutely no idea that Windows10 did that with SSD drives.  And that's exactly how all the recovery software is acting - as if a 'secure' reformat has been done.

We live and learn so thanks Bob

Dougal, have you tried this: https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/smart-error-fix.html

48 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

Dougal, have you tried this: https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/smart-error-fix.html

I have yes, but without success:-(  I like their stuff.

On a similar subject guys, having now installed two 500Gb M.2 drives (1 sata & 1 nvme) on the motherboard, I'm really shocked to discover, that leaves only 3 of the 6 sata ports operational!  My bad, as I obviously misunderstood how it worked.  I thought i might loose two ports at the most, but three is baaaaaad:-(

PCI-E SATA cards?  The subject seems to be a minefield, with prices ranging from about £10 to almost infinity!

From my extremely limited understanding, the cheap ones do not have their own onboard BIOS, but instead, rely on the motheroard BIOS for control.  Is that understanding correct?

I did once (many years ago), buy a cheapo one from eBay that worked for about 30 days before dying.

What's the score with these wee beasties?