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A few years ago, autochk/ChkDsk came out of nowhere, just to move random files to a folder called found.000 and rename them to file001.chk (number counting up) or something similar.

Unfortunately, I happened to store >10GB of my own photos and videos on that partition.

Much of it was still readable, but some file names were messed up (renamed to file###.chk or something similar), and strangely, some files were filled with text strings of names of devices (e.g. RealTek PCIe family adapter and similar), mixed with gibberish. I have no idea how that happened.

A few years ago, autochk/ChkDsk came out of nowhere, just to move random files to a folder called *found.000* and rename them to *file001.chk* (number counting up) or something similar. Unfortunately, I happened to store >10GB of my own photos and videos on that partition. Much of it was still readable, but some file names were messed up (renamed to file###.chk or something similar), and strangely, some files were filled with text strings of names of devices (e.g. *RealTek PCIe family adapter* and similar), mixed with gibberish. I have no idea how that happened.

(post is archived)

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Logging the interfaces(including all PCI/e bus) might be part of the program as it scans for drives and then filesystems to scan. Especially with PCIe where it runs pretty much DMA into the system RAM now.

In terms of partition, yes. Don't backup on your system partition. Ever. I learned the hard way that 'partitions' can exist on the same drive that succumbs to the click-of-death.

[–] • 0 pt

Thanks for sharing.

But what did you do after the click of death?

[–] • 1 pt

There were a -FEW- times that the freezer trick worked, for me. Put the drive in one of those anti-static bags, then in a larger ziplock bag(get all air out), let it sit inside a freezer for about 3-8 hours depending on how well it was wrapped up/how warm it was. After that, have the recovery system as ready as possible then take from freezer and immediately connect and dump whatever data is worth saving using bootable linux or whatever your flavor of data recovery is.

This is a one time thing if it works, none of the drives that went through that where data was recovered were able to ever work again.