Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

And stop messing around with the drive if you're interested in the results rather than the process.

[quote=TheBladeRoden post_id=14648 time=1531367685 user_id=4694]
I did try making .img files with ddrescue and hddsuperclone

[img]https://www.data-medics.com/forum/download/file.php?id=995&mode=view[/img]

I suppose if the file information is in a readable part but the file data itself is in an unreadable portion, the program wouldn't think "the file isn't here" but instead "oh, the file must be all these zeros"?
[/quote]

That drive needs new read/write heads. Looks like you've probably got a single platter drive with one weak/bad head. That or it's got 4 heads and 2 have failed.

You can probably get a near 100% recovery if you're willing to drop ~$700 at a pro lab.

Actually, the program doesn't think either. It merely copies data from the disk part specified in the file info. What the data is, depends on many factors.
It may be a fault disk returning zeros instead of actual data. Healthy SSD devices do that for files deleted by the system, that's why my first question. But usually fault disks throw warnings that they could not read that particular sector. Then R-Studio shows the warnings and may skip the files if that is specified on the Recovery dialog box. Or fill the unreadable file parts with the pattern specified on the Settings -> Bad Sector tab.
If you recovered files from an image of the disk, the image software may have filled bad sectors with zeros.
I suppose that you recovered data from the disk itself, Skip files with bad sectors was clear on the Recovery dialog box and the pattern to fill the unreadable file parts with was zeros.

I did try making .img files with ddrescue and hddsuperclone

[img]https://www.data-medics.com/forum/download/file.php?id=995&mode=view[/img]

I suppose if the file information is in a readable part but the file data itself is in an unreadable portion, the program wouldn't think "the file isn't here" but instead "oh, the file must be all these zeros"?

I think your disk has hardware problems and that may have caused the problem. There are two ways to minimize further damage.
1. The best one: go to reputable data recovery professionals.
2. Create an image of the disk and do all following file recovery from the image. See more at: [url=https://www.r-studio.com/Unformat_Help/index.html?diskimages.html]Images[/url].

About files with zeros. R-Studio analyzes the file system and recovers files from that analysis. If that analysis finds that a certain file occupies a certain part of the disk, R-Studio copies data from that part and assigns that file name. It cannot verify the content of the file as it doesn't know the actual data. Some files may have only zeros for some reasons.
There are another method of data recovery - raw file recovery - when R-Studio searches for some known patters unique to certain file types. In this case it can recover file content but not file names, time stamps, and some other file properties.
You may read more in our article: [url=https://www.r-studio.com/file-recovery-basics.html]File Recovery Basics: How Data Recovery Works[/url].

SMART gave a warning that Read Error Rate was at worst "1" with a threshold of "51."

It was during normal operation, my sound started cutting out so I was adjusting the speaker cords and that's when the crash happened.

What does drive's SMART say? It's an important question as we need to understand the source of the problem. If the problems are caused by drive's hardware, R-Studio can't do much, if not, there are some chances.

And please more details on how that crash occurred. Suddenly during normal operation, during startup, when installing updates, etc.

Regular hard drive, specifically Samsung HD502HJ. The hard drive problems did emerge after I restarted from a crash, or maybe they caused the crash.

[quote=TheBladeRoden post_id=14635 time=1531145129 user_id=4694]
When recovering my drive, it created a lot of files that have the original name, location, and file size, but instead of containing any useful data, they are now filled with zeros. Is there a way to make R-Studio automatically ignore these types of files when restoring?
[/quote]

Is this drive a SSD device? And have these files been deleted rather than lost after a crash of some kind?

When recovering my drive, it created a lot of files that have the original name, location, and file size, but instead of containing any useful data, they are now filled with zeros. Is there a way to make R-Studio automatically ignore these types of files when restoring?