Any *genuine* IT hardware gurus here?

greg66_tri_v2.0

I mean *genuine*.

"Have you tried switching it off and back on again?", and "Reformat your hard drive and reinstall all your drivers and software" are not going to cut it. This is post-grad level, not GCSE coursework.

The problem is a hard disk failure. The benchmarks are (a) "Catastrophic failure" message; (b) I know know what American Megatrends SMART means; (c) chkdsk stalls at stage 4; (d) Spinrite stalls at 60% (and 62, and 65% when restarted from there).

More details on request, for those who can help.

My question is: do I write this HD off now, or persist in trying to recover it (and if so, with what?)?

jonnyboy77

Talk about setting out your stall ...

Anyway, I'll chip in with a couple of suggestions. The first, assuming you really want to try and get the disk operational is try as many tools as possible - I have used http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ before now for various issues, with varied success. I have never had a disk fail quite so badly as it sounds like the one you are describing though, your success may be limited.

Do you write it off? That's a broad question, what is it worth to you in terms of value, data, effort etc.?

Questions in addition to those hidden above, would be what kind of disk is it, how is formatted and for what OS?

Here's hoping I don't get labelled unkindly

- Jon

bompington

I can't claim to be a guru but I know enough to see that this looks like you're into specialist disc recovery territory here, but this can cost thousands so it depends how valuable your data is. There are lots of disc recovery apps but if Spinrite won't do it I doubt any of the others will.

You could always just recover your data from your backups - you do have backups, don't you?

EKE_38BPM

Just send an email to an address in Iran explaining that you can't send the centrifuge results data that you promised to as your hard drive is busted. Throw in a few "May peace be upon him"s and a couple of "God is great"s and some very nice American gentlemen will take your hard drive away to fix.
If you're really lucky, they may even take you on an all expenses paid, fully inclusive, trip to Cuba.

You may or may not get your hard drive back....If you come back at all.

Kieran_Burns

If there is data on there that you *need* then I would stick it in the freezer for a couple of days, then plug it in and get the data off sharpish. Then bin it.

sketchley

HD are cheap these days so if you have a backup of the data I'd assume the disk drive is buggered and bin it. If you don't have a backup and want to get the data off then that's a different problem.

mudcow007

Firstly i would try making an "image" of the disk

then play round with the image instead of the disk. If the disk is damaged you could be making it worse-erer by trying to read from it

is the drive makign any weird an wonderful noises when your trying to get data from it?

can you connect it up to an external enclosure an try an read from it?

you could try loading an os from a "live disk" (dvd) then trying to read the data off it that way

how valuable is your data, you can sometime get the professionally recovered for £100+

if its the hardware of the disk you could swap controllers over an get it to work that way but only if its a seized motor or summit

tgotb

Kieran_Burns wrote:

If there is data on there that you *need* then I would stick it in the freezer for a couple of days, then plug it in and get the data off sharpish. Then bin it.

I've never heard this one before. How might freezing help?
(I know a bit about hard disks work, so feel free to assume basic knowledge)

sketchley

And if you cannot recover with the tools you have then the next stage normally involving a professional disk recovery company usually involves dismantling the disk and reading via another mechanism. If you are so inclined and have an identical working disk taking the disk out the placing it in the working drive *might* work if the disk itself is intact and the problem is with heads, controllers etc. This site might help http://repair4harddisk.org/

mudcow007

TGOTB wrote:

Kieran_Burns wrote:

If there is data on there that you *need* then I would stick it in the freezer for a couple of days, then plug it in and get the data off sharpish. Then bin it.

I've never heard this one before. How might freezing help?
(I know a bit about hard disks work, so feel free to assume basic knowledge)

seized motor normally unseizes with it being frozen but as it warms back up it dies again hence why you have to be quick as you might only get one or two passes to get any data off

gtvlusso

Okay - I am only Oracle hardware and Bladecentre compliant, but,

I would download a live Linux CD and boot from that. Then mount the F/S from there (lots of instructions online if you are not familiar with Unix interface). You *may* be able to then recover some data to an external disk.....however, it will take allot of time and messing about - mount the internal disk, get USB driver working in linux.....blah blah blah!

You probably have stale partitions, they are salvageable to a point......fsck may help if run from a live CD - again, you have to mount the internal disk.

something like;

mount /dev/sda*

However, I would be planning for f*cked disk....

UndercoverElephant

Sketchley wrote:

HD are cheap these days so if you have a backup of the data I'd assume the disk drive is buggered and bin it. If you don't have a backup and want to get the data off then that's a different problem.

Not since the floods in Thailand they're not.

craker

This PDF is quite useful (Bash it a bit, put it in the fridge, heat it up a bit etc).

http://www.hddrecovery.com.au/PDF/200ways.pdf

tgotb

mudcow007 wrote:

how valuable is your data, you can sometime get the professionally recovered for £100+

Sounds like a very lowball estimate to me; I'd be surprised if you can get anyone to look at it for less than £500.

mudcow007

TGOTB wrote:

mudcow007 wrote:

how valuable is your data, you can sometime get the professionally recovered for £100+

Sounds like a very lowball estimate to me; I'd be surprised if you can get anyone to look at it for less than £500.

we used a company to recover a drive - granted it was about 2 years ago but it was about £150 they just sent back dvd's with recovered stuff

i will try an find linkage

Linkage!

UndercoverElephant

mudcow007 wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Kieran_Burns wrote:

If there is data on there that you *need* then I would stick it in the freezer for a couple of days, then plug it in and get the data off sharpish. Then bin it.

I've never heard this one before. How might freezing help?
(I know a bit about hard disks work, so feel free to assume basic knowledge)

seized motor normally unseizes with it being frozen but as it warms back up it dies again

Except it's mainly anecdotal evidence and freezing your hard drive will cause condensation to freeze on the platters, causing irreversible damage.

greg66_tri_v2.0

Ok. This is confirming what I'm thinking.

Ultimatebootcd - Have one of those, but wanted to run Spinrite through to resolution or otherwise first.

Fridge/freezer - recommended by Spinrite as a cure for a stall (the fridge, for an hour). On my "to do" list.

Backups. Yes, well, there's a funny* story there. Everything gets auto backed up to an external drive overnight using Vista's inbuilt backup. That started throwing cyclic redundancy messages (the beginning of the problem) and not completing the backup. So I thought I'd run chkdsk, backup from fresh. Now I know from experience that Backup doesn't like starting again when there's already a backup on the backup disc. Ran chkdsk (three stage - returned all clear), deleted the back up** which was too big for the recycle bin, and started a fresh backup. Which failed. Errr...

An option is to use a data recovery tool on the backup drive, replace the corrupted drive and restore.

Content - OS and programs only. Data is stored externally on other drives. However, some software is locked to that drive, and if I replace the drive I will have to repurchase (have been through an OS failure previously and rebuilt). There are 2 or 3 programs like that which will end up costing c £200. And if i rebuild I'll probably buy W7 to replace Vista, so more £££. In short, a ground up rebuild is a costs issue rather than a data loss issue. And yet I've spent many multiples of that cost in terms of my time on this already. Go figure.

Prime objective therefore is to get it booting, then de-authorise the programs I want to save, clone it if I can, and then bin and replace. Secondary is to replace and restore from data-recovered backup. Tertiary is restore and rebuild from scratch.


*Funny, if you're not me
** yes, you read that right :oops:

mudcow007

Greg66 wrote:

deleted the back up** which was too big for the recycle bin, and started a fresh backup. Which failed. Errr...

could you not just try an recover the delete backup file? if the disk is read-a-ble at all

il_principe

Just how "specialist" is all the porn you've lost?

greg66_tri_v2.0

Il Principe wrote:

Just how "specialist" is all the porn you've lost?

I'm looking for an in-house solution.

greg66_tri_v2.0

mudcow007 wrote:

Greg66 wrote:

deleted the back up** which was too big for the recycle bin, and started a fresh backup. Which failed. Errr...

could you not just try an recover the delete backup file? if the disk is read-a-ble at all

Yes - that was my next sentence. It only occurred to me as an option last night though. It's in P2 and the moment, but may take pole by the end of the day.

cyclingprop

Don't you have a redundant SAN at home?? Tsk.

sketchley

Greg66 wrote:

deleted the back up**
** yes, you read that right :oops:

Sorry but I'm laughing at that (you). You had a disk problem so thought it would help you recover if you deleted the backup. That's funny........

greg66_tri_v2.0

Sketchley wrote:

Greg66 wrote:

deleted the back up**
** yes, you read that right :oops:

Sorry but I'm laughing at that (you). You had a disk problem so thought it would help you recover if you deleted the backup. That's funny........

Yeah, I can see that.

In my defence, (a) I take backing up quite seriously; (b) I have found that failed Vista backups mean you have to delete and start again; (c) I have deleted the X: backup and started afresh in the past without issues; (d) I have been through the cyclic redundancy error thing before and cured it with chkdsk; (e) I was deleting the X: backup so that I could make a fresh one; (f) when I hit "delete" the magnitude of the problem on the C: drive was not apparent: I expected to have a repeat of steps (c), (d) and (e).

But yes, once it all became clear I did feel like a bit of a Charlie.

Kieran_Burns

Sketchley wrote:

Greg66 wrote:

deleted the back up**
** yes, you read that right :oops:

Sorry but I'm laughing at that (you). You had a disk problem so thought it would help you recover if you deleted the backup. That's funny........

I've RTMd this post and asked the Mods to change your user name to Schadenfreude

sketchley

Must remember to backup when I get home.....

lastant

Whilst we're talking about data recovery, I don't suppose anybody has any tips on recovering stuff off an apparently failed (failing) USB drive at all do they?

Basically it was working one morning then for some reason simply stopped. No lighting up / recognition whatsoever despite repeated attempts - last weekend (three weeks on) I tried it once again 'for a laugh' and it amazingly lit up and was recognised. Selected all and started copying across, got halfway through and then went dead again.

Tried since and it's back to not being recognised at all. So, got half the data back, but not all of it. I've just sent a request in to the guys recommended on the first page and they've come back quoting £399 plus VAT! :shock:

Anybody got any ideas / suggestions?

UndercoverElephant

lastant wrote:

Whilst we're talking about data recovery, I don't suppose anybody has any tips on recovering stuff off an apparently failed (failing) USB drive at all do they?

Basically it was working one morning then for some reason simply stopped. No lighting up / recognition whatsoever despite repeated attempts - last weekend (three weeks on) I tried it once again 'for a laugh' and it amazingly lit up and was recognised. Selected all and started copying across, got halfway through and then went dead again.

Tried since and it's back to not being recognised at all. So, got half the data back, but not all of it. I've just sent a request in to the guys recommended on the first page and they've come back quoting £399 plus VAT! :shock:

Anybody got any ideas / suggestions?

My guess would be that it's a failing USB connector. How good are you with a soldering iron?

lastant

UndercoverElephant wrote:

My guess would be that it's a failing USB connector. How good are you with a soldering iron?

I did think that could be the cause - forgot to say that when plugging it in now it does get warm, so something's happening somewhere.

Soldering irons? Last time I used one was back in secondary school, so say fifteen odd years ago - can't say I was that tidy at it and certainly not Mr. Confident!

mudcow007

UndercoverElephant wrote:

lastant wrote:

Whilst we're talking about data recovery, I don't suppose anybody has any tips on recovering stuff off an apparently failed (failing) USB drive at all do they?

Basically it was working one morning then for some reason simply stopped. No lighting up / recognition whatsoever despite repeated attempts - last weekend (three weeks on) I tried it once again 'for a laugh' and it amazingly lit up and was recognised. Selected all and started copying across, got halfway through and then went dead again.

Tried since and it's back to not being recognised at all. So, got half the data back, but not all of it. I've just sent a request in to the guys recommended on the first page and they've come back quoting £399 plus VAT! :shock:

Anybody got any ideas / suggestions?

My guess would be that it's a failing USB connector. How good are you with a soldering iron?

or open case remove disk an connect to another enclosure like thisor direct to your motherboard

EKE_38BPM

Greg66 wrote:

But yes, once it all became clear I did feel like a bit of Charlie.

FTFY

Drugs are bad, mmmkay?