This is a new one for me. Hopefully, the SF brain trust will come up with a solution. Windows 10, the current version (2004).

The drive is a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB drive, used for data. I was rendering an audio track to the drive when it stopped suddenly. The program I was running froze, necessitating a reboot of the system.

When the system came back up, the drive is present with its name and drive letter, but shows as NTFS and when trying to open it, I get a not accessible, access denied message.

I have run chkdsk and it found no errors. It shows up in CrystalDiskInfo as healthy and in disk management as a healthy partition. It even allowed me to change the drive letter. It's partitioned as a GPT disk. Is there a fix, or is my data lost?

Samsung Magician software might help further diagnose your apparent drive failure.

LINK

Good Luck!

Forgot to mention, I ran Samsung Magician and it shows the drive as healthy. It even ran the performance test with no errors, which reads and writes to the disk.

Minitool Partition Wizard shows it as being healthy and shows the correct amount of data that's on it.

Firmware updated on the drive?

quote:

Originally posted by EZ_B:
Firmware updated on the drive?

Current firmware and the current version of Samsung Magician.

And now, the real question- is this your only copy of the data you are unable to access on that drive?

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
And now, the real question- is this your only copy of the data you are unable to access on that drive?

Yes (hangs head in shame).

Well, there's a saying- There are two kinds of people in the world; those who've lost data and those who shall lose data.

When you start rebuilding what you've lost, you need three backup copies. Never trust your data to any single source. Primary drive, and three backups. All backups encrypted with bitlocker if you have 10 Pro, and one of those backups outside of your dwelling, and one you keep with you whenever possible. Encrypted drives using a strong password mean that even if you lose one of your drives, all the person who finds it (or steals it) has is a drive they can reformat and use.

I know that none of this helps you right now, but you're helping others who see this thread to not make the same mistake. FWIW

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Well, there's a saying- There are two kinds of people in the world; those who've lost data and those who shall lose data.

When you start rebuilding what you've lost, you need three backup copies. Never trust your data to any single source. Primary drive, and three backups. All backups encrypted with bitlocker if you have 10 Pro, and one of those backups outside of your dwelling, and one you keep with you whenever possible.

I know that none of this helps you right now, but you're helping others who see this thread to not make the same mistake. FWIW

You are absolutely correct, Para. I should know better.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
...All backups encrypted with bitlocker if you have 10 Pro...

Another option, which I use, is VeraCrypt. Open source. I create an encrypted "container" just shy of the drive capacity. I also put a "RETURN-TO.TXT" file with contact info in the unencrypted part, in the off chance that if I do lose it, someone would be honest enough to return it.

After further testing, it's apparent the drive itself is good. Running a data recovery program, all the files are there and readable. The problem seems to be that Windows won't recognize the drive.

Was this drive formatted as GPT originally, before the problem occurred?

Is this the OS drive and if not do you have another computer you can install the drive in to see if it is accessible? Issue might not be with the drive but with the motherboard on the PC itself. I'd say check the cables (especially if they are SATA 2 which don't have the little spring clip) but if the data recovery sees the drive I don't know why Windows wouldn't.

Best wishes on a successful recovery. I had SEVERAL storage issues in the last year. I learned quick about multiple backups. It's not unheard of for primary AND backup storage to die within a week of each other. Just sayin...

Was it originally partitioned as a GPT drive?

Have you a harness

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084...dExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

that would allow you to plug into a usb port to try access it from another computer.

quote:

Originally posted by 83v45magna:
Was this drive formatted as GPT originally, before the problem occurred?

Yes, it was already formatted GPT. It's been working fine for about a year. The drive doesn't really get that much use.

You have two potential areas of issue.
1) the drive itself (electronics) have ceased working.
In that case there is NO cheap fix.
Basically lost unless you want a data recovery to tackle.
2) Lost or damaged partitions.
This CAN be recovered with proper software.
Generally recommended to diagnose from an alternate machine as to take any original hardware issues out of the equations.
The diagnostics which may or may not be successful may take a lot of time - be patient.
I use for my IT clients is: Active Data Studio 15 ~ the PAID version.
Or sometimes EASEUS Partition Manager or Data Recovery.
Note: you may try the free versions of these which may/not have limitations first.
The key is a systematic diagnosis approach and you can thyen get to the conclusion of the issue.
Good Luck

The only real alternative I have seen to try and recover this is EaseUS Data Recovery WizardPro, but it's $70 usd. There must be other software out there but they seem to have the search results sewn up pretty tight. I checked and the free trial version only does 2GB worth. For my purposes, 2gb is infinitesimal.

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I tried it with a SATA to USB cable, which I've used to clone drives. Plugging it into my laptop, it is recognized the same as in the desktop: Drive name, drive letter. Rather than showing the partition, it just shows as NTFS and gets the same message when trying to access it: Not Accessible, Access Denied.

It's almost as if it's locked. I used EASEUS Data Recovery and it lets me see all the files/folders on the drive. However, I have to spend $70 to actually use the recovery tool.

It's baffling to me how it can be accessed, written to and read from with Samsung Magician, shows in disk management as a viable drive and partition, yet Windows refuses to access it directly.

Lesson learned regarding the backup. Would still like to know what the problem actually is. It's obviously something about the drive that Windows doesn't like. Oh, well. Perhaps I can find a recovery tool that will not cost so much.

I was using Stellar Phoenix when Easeus was no longer free. Stellar might still be free.

quote:

Originally posted by Chowser:
I was using Stellar Phoenix when Easeus was no longer free. Stellar might still be free.

Thanks, Chowser. Just checked out a bunch of recovery software and all of them require payment. Stellar Phoenix is the least expensive at $50. Long ago, most of these were free to use, but no longer. Oh, well. Live and learn. Now I have a bunch of software to uninstall.