Hardware HDD stopped working

U83

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Hello everyone!

A couple of days ago I was going to play Rayman Legends on my Wii U which was installed on an external hard drive. When the game was loading the logo froze. I waited for a minute and then hard reset my console. When I turned it back on none of my games installed on the HDD were showing in the Wii U menu :wtf: I restarted the console several times, but it didn't help. If I go to the data management settings and select "Move/delete data" or try to reformat the drive I recieve error message. The HDD seems to work just fine - I tried connecting it to my PC and formating it and after that Wii U was able to format it as well. It seems like some data is corrupt or something.
I made a copy of the whole drive before I formated it so I could restore it later and I was wondering if there was a tool that would let me manage the content of the drive in Windows? Or maybe there is chance it would be developed in the future? Or maybe there's a way I could extract save data from the drive? Basically any ideas that would help me to restore my 2 years of saves are highly welcome :)
 

Alex4U

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Whoops...
Ummm, it's had to say... but you can't recovee your saves :(
But you can search or request your save in Wii U Saves Thread sharing, ans inject it with Saviine
 

U83

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Was it possible with the Wii? I heard there was a software that could read Wii file system on PC. Maybe there's a chance something similar comes out for Wii U?
Do you know what could cause this issue in the first place? I don't want to lose my saves once again ))
 

Alex4U

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Wii saves can be extracted and injected with SaveManagerGX (need. Homebrew channel!)
Maybe your HDD is not compatible with your wii u? Are you using any cwf? You disconnect AC slot power without turn off the console? You disconnect HDD while Wii U is ON?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Wii have a lot of tools can read, inject, and dump data.
Also...
You mean a nand reader?
 

U83

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I worked for 2 years before it died. I used cwf through Haxchi, but it worked fine for 2 weeks or so. I disconnected it recently when it was off, maybe it was in standby though. Can it be the reason?
 

Foxi4

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Connect it to a PC and try to make a ghost copy of the drive by creating a bit-by-bit image, then run standard HDD recovery. Chances are that you screwed up the allocation table or the boot record while your actual data is untouched and perfectly fine. There are many utilities that will let you do that even if the drive shows up as unrecognised as long as it shows up as a device. Alternatively just bite the bullet and run chkdsk on it straight away to attempt a fix - you have little to lose. If the drive it physically damaged, recovery might only be partial or not possible at all, but as long as it shows up in the device manager, there is hope - just don't format it, even if the OS requests that you do. For the future, get a drive with external power so that resetting the system won't cut the power to the disk's logic board and motor, preventing data corruption and physicality damage. That, and always keep a backup of important data on a separate drive.
 

U83

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It does run with an external adapter and it's a desktop drive, which is why I think it's weird that it failed. I tried copying it with USB Image Tool and then restoring it, but it it didn't work, even after I formated it with the Wii U. When I boot up my Wii U it seems it's not even trying to read the disk, so I guess you're right about allocation table or some other system stuff being corrupted.
Do I need to initilize the drive in Windows before running chkdsk? Chkdsk uses drive letter as a parameter which my drive doesn't currently have.
 

Foxi4

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It does run with an external adapter and it's a desktop drive, which is why I think it's weird that it failed. I tried copying it with USB Image Tool and then restoring it, but it it didn't work, even after I formated it with the Wii U. When I boot up my Wii U it seems it's not even trying to read the disk, so I guess you're right about allocation table or some other system stuff being corrupted.
Do I need to initilize the drive in Windows before running chkdsk? Chkdsk uses drive letter as a parameter which my drive doesn't currently have.
In that state you might not be able to recover (at least not with fiddling with it for days using live CD's of all-sorts), but you can try through the drive manager (My Computer -> RMB -> Manage), if all else fails, delete the volume. If that fails as well, you'll have to nuke the platters with a service tool. What's the brand?
 

Foxi4

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In that case you'll have to grab a copy of Seatools, preferably the bootable one. If it fails to detect a USB drive, you might have to open it up an connect it through SATA, provided your external drive has an internal SATA header - look it up online. If it does not, you're left with standard USB drive tools. It's hard for me to diagnose because I'm not there, so before doing anything drastic, consider providing the community with a wealth of screenshots.
 

The Real Jdbye

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Connect it to a PC and try to make a ghost copy of the drive by creating a bit-by-bit image, then run standard HDD recovery. Chances are that you screwed up the allocation table or the boot record while your actual data is untouched and perfectly fine. There are many utilities that will let you do that even if the drive shows up as unrecognised as long as it shows up as a device. Alternatively just bite the bullet and run chkdsk on it straight away to attempt a fix - you have little to lose. If the drive it physically damaged, recovery might only be partial or not possible at all, but as long as it shows up in the device manager, there is hope - just don't format it, even if the OS requests that you do. For the future, get a drive with external power so that resetting the system won't cut the power to the disk's logic board and motor, preventing data corruption and physicality damage. That, and always keep a backup of important data on a separate drive.
Wii U doesn't use a standard filesystem so data recovery software will not help him.
 

sarkwalvein

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It still isn't working right in the Wii U even after formatting?
Try completely erasing the partition table and creating a new one with the adequate tool for your OS. I haven't used windows for a long time, but I think there you should use the diskpart*1 command line.

Also try another USB port? Try another USB cable? Try another USB-HDD adapter?
Seems to me like data transfer corruption on the USB level.
If it works after trying one of those and if you made a byte accurate image, then restore the image and try again.

*1Warning: that command is dangerous, read and use it correctly.
If you happen to use linux I would do a:
Code:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/whateverisyourdisk
That will zero-fill the disk, then I would do an fdisk and create a new partition table.
 
Last edited by sarkwalvein,

U83

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In that case you'll have to grab a copy of Seatools, preferably the bootable one. If it fails to detect a USB drive, you might have to open it up an connect it through SATA, provided your external drive has an internal SATA header - look it up online. If it does not, you're left with standard USB drive tools. It's hard for me to diagnose because I'm not there, so before doing anything drastic, consider providing the community with a wealth of screenshots.

I'll give it a try.

It still isn't working right in the Wii U even after formatting?
Try completely erasing the partition table and creating a new one with the adequate tool for your OS. I haven't used windows for a long time, but I think there you should use the diskpart*1 command line.

Also try another USB port? Try another USB cable? Try another USB-HDD adapter?
Seems to me like data transfer corruption on the USB level.
If it works after trying one of those and if you made a byte accurate image, then restore the image and try again.

It seems to work fine after I format it with Wii U.
BTW Wii U gave me error massage if I tried formating the drive after it stopped working, but after I formated it in Windows Wii U formated the drive without a problem.
 

Foxi4

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I'll give it a try.



It seems to work fine after I format it with Wii U.
BTW Wii U gave me error massage if I tried formating the drive after it stopped working, but after I formated it in Windows Wii U formated the drive without a problem.
GG, but you're not out of the woods yet. Unhook the drive and do a zero-fill and a diagnostics with Seatools to mark off any possible bad sectors and replace them with the emergency pool (it'll do it automatically), then chkdsk with Windows to confirm disk health and *then* format with the Wii U. Otherwise you're exposing yourself to the possibility of random failure after a failed r/w attempt - the Wii U is too stupid to fix that kind of an issue.
 

U83

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Thanks for your help, guys, but it didn't work.
I tried zero-filling the drive, using Seatools to check it (it passed all tests) and then restoring the image, but it did nothng. I guess I'll just get over it and keep the image till better times and hope Nintendo fixes this ridiculous backup system with the Switch.
 
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