UKH

Daughter's computer has not enjoyed its trip home from university.

She has C: an SSD with system files (W10) which seems to work ok

The D: drive with personal files, coursework, photos etc. now only appears on explorer (not on system summary) and either crashes or says requires format if attempting to access.

I assume the index is screwed (?by bad sectors in the FAT?).  She has no backup (despite strict advice otherwise; don't get me started)...and the data is important.

Questions:

- is there a simple way to check my hypothesis, given that any attempt to access D: just hangs or says to format?

- if it's screwed is there a way to recover anything using tools I'd have a reasonable hope of operating (low skill/knowledge)?

- failing that, can you recommend a recovery firm?

The whole box runs painfully slowly despite a reasonable spec and Defender is up to date and shows no issues.

Grateful as ever for all help and advice; a little too soon to appreciate "should've backed up" kind of input, but I'm sure we'll get to that.

Is the D: drive an HDD, rather than an SSD? 

If so, then what is the capacity?

Open a command prompt on the c drive

Run chkdsk on the d drive to start with. Google the switches to use, accept data loss is the one u need I think, so you'll probably lose some data on the odd bad sector but the drive may be recovered

Good luck

It is an HDD.  Unsure of the capacity as I can't see any drive info

That's most helpful; thank you.  I'll report back!

It has most likely been bumped or dropped. Do not format the disk.

She/you will need to spend money on this if there is no backup of the important stuff. Look for a local PC support person or company which advertises data recovery and take it to them; they should be able to recover most everything. You may have to spend £££.

Afterwards, invest some time in understanding how to back up and secure your important stuff.

Sorry I can't be more positive.

Yup - that figures.  I'm paranoid about it and have double backups at home; she has been a little cavalier.  Hey ho.

She won't be so cavalier in the future! I found some CDs I burnt from when I was at uni when tidying up. God knows what coursework it could be, I've not had a machine with a DVD drive for at least 7 years to even think about investigating.

I was fairly surprised to see a report earlier this year that Seagate provided a free data recovery for an in-warranty drive:

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/a-thumbs-up-for-seagate-dri...

Do an inspection pass first...

Given the sometimes it appears, sometime not element, I'd also suggest trying the very simple hardware check of disconnecting the HDD cable and reconnecting it.  A poorly fitting connector could easily have come lose (though not fully disconnected) in transit and give you that kind of intermittent.

You sir are the right stuff!

Chkdsk found and fixed and the drive is now visible and populated. I guess some of the files will be wonky still but there weren't a lot of fixes and so I'm hopeful that it'll be just the odd wrong pixel in a photo here and there.

I've always heard people rubbish Gates' DOS, but that utility seems like the cats' pyjamas!

Thanks again all

Glad to hear that the disk appears to have mounted but I'd still be very wary. If the corruption was the result of bad sectors, it may be a sign that the drive is failing and, if so, backing up the data and replacing the drive should be a priority. 

You can run a S.M.A.R.T test on the drive (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.) to determine its status. The necessary software for reporting disk health can often be found on the manufacturer's website (or may even be bundled in the PC's bloatware), failing that, you can use something like CrystalDiskInfo to run the test. Anything other than a GOOD result and I recommend replacing your drive.

Great news. You're probably already doing this, but backup anything of value from that drive immediately. It may be about to fail.

Or it might be totally fine for another decade.

You can run chkdsk as a red only operation initially.

Shock may have dislodged a connection so perhaps you can reseat the connector to drive D:?

CHKDSK is very useful.

If windows has been terminated mid session by a power failure you can accumulate errors which can show up later, eg a system image backup can fail.  CHKDSK /F run as admin will often fix this problem

Backup/copy it to an external drive *NOW* while you can in case it is failing 

In future get her to use some kind of cloud storage like Google drive, OneDrive and set it up to automatically keep an online copy, that way if some disaster takes the laptop there'll be no stress over the data. Depending on data quantity you might have to pay £1.50 a month or something - it's worth it 

Do not fix anything with chkdsk it will gather any fragments it finds and output them in *.chk files and update your NTFS/FAT tables and your gubbed.

Use Recuva - free , Erasus - paid, or Trinity Rescue Kit Free but Linux boot good at finding stuff others struggle with.

Or buy a Network Access Storage device and have your own personal Cloud Storage.

Although Backblaze do unlimited storage for $70 a year.

For a brief moment, having misread  "IT help please" as "It helps please". I opened the thread expecting to read that you had a part lorry load of unused tarmac, you were in the area and were offering to redo the drive cheap.

Anyone recommend a NAS?  It'd be for basic, shared, internet accessible back up for 3 boxes.

I can highly recommend anything from Synology. There are some excellent reviews of NAS boxes in general from this channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFyP17HoU-vpxhIpGXnXx2g

The advice I was given with the "Big Brains" on this site were to look at either Synology or QNAP as these were the best players in town and a good investment.

I think these Two Drive NAS boxes are a good option. You will need to put hard drives inside them as they are just empty boxes.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS218play-Bay-Desktop-Enclosure/dp/B076CH...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS220j-Bay-Desktop-Enclosure/dp/B084CLC39...

You can check their reviews here. The DS 218 play is so close in spec to the reviewed DS220+ that they are practically the same ish.

youtube.com/watch?v=-5a58pxXqMQ&

You could make your own NAS box with an old computer and using FreeNAS/TrueNAS software.

https://www.truenas.com/freenas/

Personally I'd just use a cloud service, you get 1TB of OneDrive space with an Office subscription these days. Let them deal with all the complexity.

A NAS isn't particularly resilient as backups go, if your electrics go in a storm and zap your NAS and computer, you've lost it. If your house burns down, you've lost it. Get some nasty malware on your network, potentially lost it. You also have to pay the electric to run it, and pay upfront for the hardware, and learn how to use the OS to secure it properly, and maintain it yourself.

Cloud sync service, plus an external disk cold storage you copy everything to periodically and then disconnect, unplug, and store somewhere, would be my recommendation. Cheaper, less faff, less technical hurdles, less opportunity to screw up.

A NAS is part of a backup strategy 3-2-1. And its a lot better than the OP's daughter just keeping everything in one location.

I really would not recommend a NAS to someone non-technical as a 'my first backup'. There are many other options that are cheaper, simpler and more effective.

For "a normal user" I'd second the OneDrive/Office365 suggestion. I do everything in there and just let OneDrive sort itself out in terms of synching between laptop/phone/tablet/cloud, rather than having to faff about doing a separate backup operation. I think I pay £7.99 a month for the full Office365 bundle, which include legitimate sharing with a few friends and family, giving them their own access and OneDrive cloud storage - good value really.

USB HDD. FreeFileSync script to run backup & shutdown, with shortcut on the desktop. Macrium Reflect to take system disk images.

NAS is nice for sharing information with multiple devices in the house, and even remotely. But as has been pointed out, a NAS is not great as a backup; fire, theft, flood, power surge. NAS needs a backup routine, and, ideally, one that is not permanently connected.

Live data

Local Backup

Remote Backup

I'm using this right now, as recomended by your good self a few years ago. I'm methodically backing up my NAS to some external HDD's which will live inside an Argos fireproof safe. 😀

My NAS is not a backup, the external drives are the backup. The NAS is for convenience of accessing my stuff from my phone, laptop,tablet or computer with the added benefit that I can access my stuff from a friend's house or at an office who want to see a warranty doc or insurance doc.

This may be interesting to watch

youtube.com/watch?v=OGOHA-t6j6M&

I think I've found a replacement for my Synology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Good news! If the system information was damaged by the bump, chkdsk can correct that, and she may be good to go. Has she checked the important files?

If it hasn't gone according to plan, individual files may have corruptions, but it will be larger amounts than one pixel. It will be obvious if the file isn't what it should be.

ff

E2A: +1 for those advocating an Office subscription - OneDrive is most likely the most straightforward solution.