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Hi, I have a problem with an external HDD and I would like some help. Three days ago I connected an external HDD with some video files on it to my TV media player through USB and, as a result, the file system was thrashed. In the Disk Management, the disk appears as RAW and, whenever I connect it to a PC, it asks to be formatted. If I try to run Check Disk, it says it can't access the drive.
I managed to successfully recover my files on another HDD with Active Data Studio (and I had previous back-ups for most of them anyway), but there are some things I wish to inquire about:

1. Can anyone guess what exactly went wrong when I connected the HDD to the TV?

2. Even though I recovered the partition on other drives (twice, just in case), I would like to see if the original MBR can be repaired (ActiveDataStudio has managed to identify the partition with its exact structure intact, but, even though it has recovered the partition on external drives, it can't recover in its original place. More exactly, the partition appears in the ActiveDataStudio's manager as it was, but the OS can't read it. Is there a way?

3. One minor issues: the drives where I recovered the lost partition seem to have been formatted so that they require admin rights for operations on them. How do I cancel this attribute?

1. Impossible to say for sure from the information available. Could be flaky hardware (the drive or the USB bridge chip it is using) or buggy firmware (in the TV).

2. I'm not familiar with ActiveDataStudio, so I'm not sure what the issue is here. Perhaps the partition type is incorrect, or there's other file system damage that is confusing the OS. If the recovered copies are readable and appear to be intact, my suggestion is to just reformat the disk and copy the data back. Or you could try a different recovery tool.

3. As an admin, take ownership of the folders on the drive. Then you should be able to change the permissions.

just brew it! wrote:

1. Impossible to say for sure from the information available. Could be flaky hardware (the drive or the USB bridge chip it is using) or buggy firmware (in the TV).

2. I'm not familiar with ActiveDataStudio, so I'm not sure what the issue is here. Perhaps the partition type is incorrect, or there's other file system damage that is confusing the OS. If the recovered copies are readable and appear to be intact, my suggestion is to just reformat the disk and copy the data back. Or you could try a different recovery tool.

3. As an admin, take ownership of the folders on the drive. Then you should be able to change the permissions.

Thanks for the reply.

1. Any suggestion about how to identify the problem? What do you mean about "flaky hardware"?

2. Yes, the recovered copies are readable and intact. I asked this question for academic purposes anyway. Since I had a back-up performed only 5 days before this incident and therefore all files were secure, I wanted to use this opportunity to experiment a bit with the recovery methods.
Speaking of which, could you suggest a different recovery tool? Although ActiveData worked, it would be good to have an alternative if it fails.

3. Done and solved. Thanks.