Question: Windows is on my C drive which is an SSD and is completely fine. My D drive, which had most of my programs and everything else was a spanned volume consisting of two 1TB HDD’s. The first of those two HDD’s seems to have failed, it is still detected in the bios, disk management, and in SeaTools but it fails the generic short test in seatools and windows does not show any D drive.
So my questions are first: What should I try to try and get the data off the dead drive?
and second: If it is not possible to repair the dead drive, how can I create a new volume with only the functional HDD to be my new D: drive in windows without reformatting it? So that I can at least keep half of my data.
Answer:
But again, you have not once asked or considered what is wrong with the drive itself. Data recovery is almost entirely about fixing the failed hard drive in order to get the data back. For all you know it could be a very simple problem. I understand that hardware is probably not your specialty, and from a pure software perspective there is no way to fix it, so let someone else who knows about hardware chime in.
Data recovery is decidedly NOT about fixing the failed drive its about salvaging what MAY be readable from the platters. Very often it involves removing the platters in a clean room environment, placing them into a functional device, and salvaging whatever data can be salvaged.
What USAFRet is too humble to tell you is he does this hardware stuff for many years for the US Government. He is literally an expert in this . If there was a simple fix he would know it. If there was a simple fix you probably would have found it already. The reason hes mentioning getting files off the working drive is you are using a spanned volume, which is RAID 0 meaning the files are fragmented between the two drives. This increases performance as parts of the file are read from 2 places, the downside is you have lost half the fragment when the first drive failed.
He shared with you two credible links telling your data is tanked. Even a Data recovery service isn’t helping you now. I understand you’re frustrated but fighting with him and others isn’t going to get your data back. Seagate themselves specifically said if your drive fails the Generic short test send it back:
https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/the-seagate-diagnostic-software-has-produced-an-8-digit-error-code-what-should-i-do-208311en/
This is not something you’re fixing yourself, its a doorstop.