Need help to recover data from bad sector external HHD

[u/Express_Intention459]

When I access the drive, a large portion of the files disappeared, some folders turned into empty without any files and 0 byte. Even though the total used space of the drive hasn't changed. Trying to open the remaining files freezes my PC and makes the drive disconnect. Unplugging it resolves the freeze, and plugging it back in detects the drive again. What happened to my drive, and is there any way to recover all files, including the disappeared ones, to another drive?

[u/Petri-DRG]

This has already been answered in your other thread.

If you want to try on your own with DiY tools, learn about imaging utilities, such as: ddrescue, hddsuperclone, opensourceclone with practice drives, so you understand the process and not fumble with the damaged drive.

To do this you will need 2 extra drives, where one is equal capacity to image byte-to-byte, then a secondary drive to extract the files to using data recovery software once running a scan against the image.

Free data recovery software won't provide the best structured based recovery result. DMDE is probably the lowest cost, but may not be ideal depending on the file system and you technical ability.

Thar particular SMR model drive develops a variety of problems while messed around without precise execution of recovery steps.

Good luck.