Can see files, but can’t access them
Summary
This is a very common problem, and is often a symptom of bad sectors and/or a failing drive.
If we catch the problem early, it’s often a lot easier and cheaper to recover, vs. from cases that have had long, entry-level or software-only attempts ran on the drive for hours or days first, though we’re still often able to recover those too (the drive is just sometimes in worse condition after other failed attempts). If quick success on your own isn’t possible, getting your drive to the professionals at IT Data Recovery can make a difference between success or failure, and if we catch the problem early vs. late, the price may be much lower than if the drive has completely died or if the damage has grown and spread from the way it was initially, which is often not too far away once these symptoms start.
Symptom
Your computer is probably slow, especially when trying to access the desired files. It still somewhat seems to show your folders, but there is no practical way to actually copy them off onto a good drive. Often, the drive is operating so slowly that nothing practical can be done, and things that should take just seconds can take hours or longer…or fail completely. A failing hard drive or SSD will almost never get better on its own, but once a failure has started, they very commonly will continue to degrade and become worse before completely failing.
The Good News
The good news is that the drive is not completely dead yet, since the files or folders can still somewhat be seen. If we catch this problem early, the data recovery’s difficulty and cost may not be too bad yet.
The Solution
If your data is important, we strongly suggest checking your drive in with the pros IT Data Recovery sooner rather than later with cases like this. We have over $150,000 worth of specialized data recovery equipment at our disposal to ensure the safest and greatest chance for successful recovery on bad drives that are displaying these symptoms. Without this equipment, even with our experience and knowhow, we’d be at a huge disadvantage, so no individual IT person or computer repair shop without this equipment should feel bad about not being able to recover these failing drives, even if it seems like they can get so close to the data since the folders are still somewhat viewable. In this situation, 90% of the time this is due to early-stage hardware failure. If your data is crucial, a software-only type attempt (even if sometimes successful on some drives) will often destroy or at least allow degradation of these failing drives, and repeated amateur attempts can make a bad situation worse. For this reason, we recommend avoiding the risk inherent in software-only type recovery attempts and we recommend bringing the drive to IT Data Recovery to ensure the safest and greatest chances for successful recovery.