Any hope to recover data?

  • Thread starter Thread starter sergio96w7
  • Start date Start date
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sergio96w7

Hey, I'm hoping somebody here will be able to give me some guidance as
I'm running out of ideas...

Background:
Partners computer decided randomly one morning that her system HDD
doesn't work anymore. I tried all sorts of bios settings, cable and
jumper combinations but the bottom line is that her computer would not
recognize the drive even existed, not even at bootup let alone in
windows after reinstalling windows onto her backup drive. I placed the
damaged drive into my computer and not only did it not show up
anywhere but it stopped my backup hdd from displaying in windows (told
me it had to be formatted).

I've determined that the only way I can get anything out of the hdd is
to place it on an IDE channel all by itself. Luckily my primary hdd is
a SATA drive so all I had to do was unplug my backup drive and we were
in business, sort of...

So windows now recognize the new piece of hardware and installs
drivers for it. The problem now is that the Disk Management utility
shows the physical drive (80g WD drive with 2 partitions) as only 7.5g
in size. I assume that this space is what was left over from the 2
partitions. I also noted that my computer is VERY slow to boot past
the windows loading screen when the damaged drive is attached.

Recover My Files Results:
Not good so far I'm afraid. I download the latest version and have
tried to run fast and complete format recovers on the 7.5g physical
drives to no avail. The search starts and it all seems OK but it runs
incredibly slowly. I left it running overnight and almost 9hours later
the search box read something like, "searching drive 0-80 of
16540064". Yes, that says 80 of 16 million. Now after 9 hours my
very poor math skills tell me that I would have to wait somewhere
around 100 years for that search to finish

Oh and my computer that I'm trying to repair the drive on is WinXP Pro
x64 edition. I don't know if this makes any difference but the stupid
OS stuffs up so many programs that I never can be sure

So what now? Is there any hope left?
 
Previously sergio96w7 said:
Hey, I'm hoping somebody here will be able to give me some guidance as
I'm running out of ideas...
Click to expand...
Background:
Partners computer decided randomly one morning that her system HDD
doesn't work anymore. I tried all sorts of bios settings, cable and
jumper combinations but the bottom line is that her computer would not
recognize the drive even existed, not even at bootup let alone in
windows after reinstalling windows onto her backup drive. I placed the
damaged drive into my computer and not only did it not show up
anywhere but it stopped my backup hdd from displaying in windows (told
me it had to be formatted).
Click to expand...
I've determined that the only way I can get anything out of the hdd is
to place it on an IDE channel all by itself. Luckily my primary hdd is
a SATA drive so all I had to do was unplug my backup drive and we were
in business, sort of...
Click to expand...
So windows now recognize the new piece of hardware and installs
drivers for it. The problem now is that the Disk Management utility
shows the physical drive (80g WD drive with 2 partitions) as only 7.5g
in size. I assume that this space is what was left over from the 2
partitions. I also noted that my computer is VERY slow to boot past
the windows loading screen when the damaged drive is attached.
Click to expand...
Recover My Files Results:
Not good so far I'm afraid. I download the latest version and have
tried to run fast and complete format recovers on the 7.5g physical
drives to no avail. The search starts and it all seems OK but it runs
incredibly slowly. I left it running overnight and almost 9hours later
the search box read something like, "searching drive 0-80 of
16540064". Yes, that says 80 of 16 million. Now after 9 hours my
very poor math skills tell me that I would have to wait somewhere
around 100 years for that search to finish
Click to expand...
Oh and my computer that I'm trying to repair the drive on is WinXP Pro
x64 edition. I don't know if this makes any difference but the stupid
OS stuffs up so many programs that I never can be sure
Click to expand...
So what now? Is there any hope left?
Click to expand...

First it still needs diagnostics. Please post a full SMART status here.
You can optain that for example with the smartmontools
(smartctl -a <drive> is the command) under Windows or Linux, also
contained for example in the Knoppix CD-Linux (does not install anything
when run).

Arno
 
sergio96w7 said:
incredibly slowly. I left it running overnight and almost 9hours later
the search box read something like, "searching drive 0-80 of
16540064". Yes, that says 80 of 16 million. Now after 9 hours my
very poor math skills tell me that I would have to wait somewhere
around 100 years for that search to finish
Click to expand...

That's very typical of a read/write head failure. Not definitely the
problem, but likely so.


Odie
 
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