so i can continue running testdisk and run the self tests on the healthy hard drive at the same time and then post it?
Yeah that should be fine. I’d recommend to run self test after the search
ok i will wait to run the self tests after the deeper search on testdisk.
Is it ok to unplug the failing 3tb hdd from the pc while its on?
Just leave it for now. Make sure it’s not mounted and you should be fine. Unplug once you’re done with everything else
Alright. I will let testdisk finish the deeper search and then shut it down so I can unplug the failing drive and then I will run the selftests and then post it
well I don’t see any issues with that drive at least. you may have to use photorec and just sift through everything. or spend money on recovery tools or having a professional do it. I’ve personally never had much results with testdisk but photorec usually delivers… it just delivers too much.
Do I have to have another drive for it to copy to or does it recover all the files on that same drive? If I need another drive how should I prepare it?
You do need another drive otherwise you’re overwriting as you recover
ok thanks. how does photo rec work? will it just make a copy to a working hard drive and i will be able to see everything on it?
on another note what is a good program to use to see if anything is on an unallocated(lost partition i believe) drive? @urmamasllama