Any other way to recover a HDD which is freezing the system? Spinrite says it will take 584 hours!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jonathan
  • Start date Start date
J

Jonathan

Dead Maxtor HDD. Powermax confirms it can see it, says there's drive error.
Oddly, SMART reports OK. But I have only been able to get tools to see this
drive by booting PC, then removing cable from HDD *just* after the POST
beep, then reconnecting cable as soon as CD spins.
Otherwise, the HDD activity light stays on and nothing happens.

Spinrite wants 584 hours (584 hours = 3.47619048 weeks - thanks google!) and
counting, Disk Commander freezes for 10 minutes at a time.

Is there any more "rough and ready" recovery tool? The data isn't valuable
enough to pay £100's to a specialist firm, but we'd like as much of it back
as possible for historical reasons!

Chkdsk strangely doesn't see the drive, nor does fdsk or indeed anything
except spinrite and Disk Commander, mainly because it seems the drive
doesn't have a letter. However, I CAN see correctly named directories and
files, in amongst the guff, via some browsing (but not recovering) tool.

Thanks
 
Jonathan said:
Dead Maxtor HDD. Powermax confirms it can see it, says there's drive error.
Oddly, SMART reports OK. But I have only been able to get tools to see this
drive by booting PC, then removing cable from HDD *just* after the POST
beep, then reconnecting cable as soon as CD spins.
Click to expand...

are you booting from it or slaving it? If your booting from it then slave it
in another machine.


Otherwise, the HDD activity light stays on and nothing happens.
Spinrite wants 584 hours (584 hours = 3.47619048 weeks - thanks google!) and
counting, Disk Commander freezes for 10 minutes at a time.

Is there any more "rough and ready" recovery tool? The data isn't valuable
enough to pay £100's to a specialist firm, but we'd like as much of it back
as possible for historical reasons!
Click to expand...

old story:

650 mb of data >burn to CD
4 gigs of data > burn to DVD
NEVER leave treasured/important things on the hard drive.
 
JAD said:
are you booting from it or slaving it? If your booting from it then slave
it
in another machine.
Click to expand...


You could temporarily install linux (mandriva or something), then mount the
drive as a ntfs or fat32 volume. Then it's a simple matter of
copying/pasting to a drive that Windows does recognize. Then reboot to
windows, done. -Dave
 
You have physical bad spots on the disk. You
might be able to slave the drive in another pc,
or in the same pc to a new working drive ....
and see your files. If you cannot see your files,
you are pretty much done.

johns
 
Jonathan said:
Dead Maxtor HDD. Powermax confirms it can see it, says there's drive
error. Oddly, SMART reports OK. But I have only been able to get
tools to see this drive by booting PC, then removing cable from HDD
*just* after the POST beep, then reconnecting cable as soon as CD
spins. Otherwise, the HDD activity light stays on and nothing happens.

Spinrite wants 584 hours (584 hours = 3.47619048 weeks - thanks
google!) and counting, Disk Commander freezes for 10 minutes at a
time.
Is there any more "rough and ready" recovery tool? The data isn't
valuable enough to pay £100's to a specialist firm, but we'd like as
much of it back as possible for historical reasons!

Chkdsk strangely doesn't see the drive, nor does fdsk or indeed
anything except spinrite and Disk Commander, mainly because it seems
the drive doesn't have a letter. However, I CAN see correctly named
directories and files, in amongst the guff, via some browsing (but
not recovering) tool.
Click to expand...

You could try aggressively cooling the drive with a fan etc.

Maxtors can see the ics get surprisingly hot if there isnt adequate
airflow over the logic card, and that might be what is producing the
high error rate and hence the long time for spinrite etc.
 
Jonathan said:
Dead Maxtor HDD. Powermax confirms it can see it, says there's drive error.
Oddly, SMART reports OK. But I have only been able to get tools to see this
drive by booting PC, then removing cable from HDD *just* after the POST
beep, then reconnecting cable as soon as CD spins.
Otherwise, the HDD activity light stays on and nothing happens.

Spinrite wants 584 hours (584 hours = 3.47619048 weeks - thanks google!) and
counting, Disk Commander freezes for 10 minutes at a time.

Is there any more "rough and ready" recovery tool? The data isn't valuable
enough to pay £100's to a specialist firm, but we'd like as much of it back
as possible for historical reasons!

Chkdsk strangely doesn't see the drive, nor does fdsk or indeed anything
except spinrite and Disk Commander, mainly because it seems the drive
doesn't have a letter. However, I CAN see correctly named directories and
files, in amongst the guff, via some browsing (but not recovering) tool.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Two things to try before really panicking. Remove the hard
drive and (a) install it in another computer with a known,
adequate PSU, as a slave drive. Failing (a), (b) install the
hard drive in a quality USB2/Firewire external enclosure or
dock and connect as external drive. (b) might do a better job
at stabilizing the Maxtor well enough to recover the data.
 
Dead Maxtor HDD. Powermax confirms it can see it, says there's drive error.
Oddly, SMART reports OK. But I have only been able to get tools to see this
drive by booting PC, then removing cable from HDD *just* after the POST
beep, then reconnecting cable as soon as CD spins.
Otherwise, the HDD activity light stays on and nothing happens.

Spinrite wants 584 hours (584 hours = 3.47619048 weeks - thanks google!) and
counting, Disk Commander freezes for 10 minutes at a time.

Is there any more "rough and ready" recovery tool? The data isn't valuable
enough to pay £100's to a specialist firm, but we'd like as much of it back
as possible for historical reasons!

Chkdsk strangely doesn't see the drive, nor does fdsk or indeed anything
except spinrite and Disk Commander, mainly because it seems the drive
doesn't have a letter. However, I CAN see correctly named directories and
files, in amongst the guff, via some browsing (but not recovering) tool.

Thanks
Click to expand...

No guarantees, but I have had moderate success doing the following.

1. Remove the drive and set the jumpers so it will be alone on a cable (no
other HDD or CD-ROM)
2. Wrap the drive in a paper towel leaving the connector end accessible
3. Put the wrapped drive in a gallon size zip loc bag connector end nearest
the zipper
4. Put the zipped up bagged drive in the freezer over night.
5. Make sure your PC can boot from another HDD, CD or Floppy and you have a
spare drive to hold the content of the bad drive. THe cold drive will have
its own channel
6. When you are ready to hook up the cold drive, open the bag enough to get
to the connectors. (The paper towel is there to absorb moisture that sneaks
in
7. Hook it up and boot up the system.
8 If the drive work, quickly copy all the files to the spare drive. If it
heats up and fails before the copy is done, repeat the process and try to
start the copy from where the last one left off.

BH
5. Next day open
 
Brad Houser said:
On 11 Aug 2006 18:08:10 +0200, Jonathan wrote:
Click to expand...
BH
5. Next day open
Click to expand...

Heh! OK, big thanks for all the help here.

Bought a new drive as step one.
The recovery CD is scratched, so I'm finally going with putting Windows
Vista beta on it for an OS (tried Fedora 6 - looks great, way better than
any other Linux I've tried, but too much of a learning curve given the
time).

What I DID manage to do was find a tool that rebuilt the MBR from scanning
the disk. Although this only showed 1 directory and a few files, a strange
side effect was that the HDD didn't freeze the PC up, although it DOES
freeze up when doing a scandisk partway through.

BUT at least I now have a drive that the PC can see as having a letter.

I'll see what happens when Vista is loaded up, and will see what I can see
from running as a slave then (didn't work before)

Wish me luck!
 
Jonathan said:
Dead Maxtor HDD. Powermax confirms it can see it, says there's drive
error.
Oddly, SMART reports OK. But I have only been able to get tools to see
this drive by booting PC, then removing cable from HDD *just* after the
POST beep, then reconnecting cable as soon as CD spins.
Otherwise, the HDD activity light stays on and nothing happens.

Spinrite wants 584 hours (584 hours = 3.47619048 weeks - thanks google!)
and counting, Disk Commander freezes for 10 minutes at a time.

Is there any more "rough and ready" recovery tool? The data isn't valuable
enough to pay £100's to a specialist firm, but we'd like as much of it
back as possible for historical reasons!

Chkdsk strangely doesn't see the drive, nor does fdsk or indeed anything
except spinrite and Disk Commander, mainly because it seems the drive
doesn't have a letter. However, I CAN see correctly named directories and
files, in amongst the guff, via some browsing (but not recovering) tool.

Thanks
Click to expand...
Have you tried www.retrodata.co.uk ?
Not used them, but apparently they have reasonable charges and are very
helpful. Either go to their website or ask in uk.comp.homebuilt for Odie.

HTH
SteveH
 
Jonathan said:
Dead Maxtor HDD. Powermax confirms it can see it, says there's drive error.
Oddly, SMART reports OK. But I have only been able to get tools to see this
drive by booting PC, then removing cable from HDD *just* after the POST
beep, then reconnecting cable as soon as CD spins.
Otherwise, the HDD activity light stays on and nothing happens.

Spinrite wants 584 hours (584 hours = 3.47619048 weeks - thanks google!) and
counting, Disk Commander freezes for 10 minutes at a time.

Is there any more "rough and ready" recovery tool? The data isn't valuable
enough to pay £100's to a specialist firm, but we'd like as much of it back
as possible for historical reasons!

Chkdsk strangely doesn't see the drive, nor does fdsk or indeed anything
except spinrite and Disk Commander, mainly because it seems the drive
doesn't have a letter. However, I CAN see correctly named directories and
files, in amongst the guff, via some browsing (but not recovering) tool.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Does it make clicking noises?
 
Does it make clicking noises?
Click to expand...

No, physically the drive sounded OK.

In the end, all I got was, oddly, about 80 perfect system files from the
root of the drive, but 40 hours of various recovery tools showed me that I
was just left with several thousand files called
????????.??? etc (examination of these files showed no data of any use)

At no stage did the drive make strange noises, it just "stopped" always at
the same points - the beginning, about 30%, and about 70%.
It would "stick there for 3-8 minutes, then quite happily move on.

I rebuilt the pc with a new drive, said "sorry, I can't do it but here's the
drive", and left him with a full report and a "how to and why you should
backup weekly". I then spoke to some very snooty sounding chap who said:
"Well, you clearly don't know what you're doing. First rule is NEVER attempt
recovery on a bad drive - always just swap the platters into another hard
drive and most of the time, the data comes back".

"Just swap the platters"....

http://hackaday.com/entry/1234000840067578/

Riiight.

PC repair isn't my life's work, but I've done a little hard drive recovery
(about 9) - of which roughly 7 required
fdisk /mbr
and the other two were just a case of drop into another pc, backup data,
surface scan, restore windows.

And what's the chance of finding an old identical chassis from a 5 year old
drive?
 
Jonathan said:
No, physically the drive sounded OK.

In the end, all I got was, oddly, about 80 perfect system files from the
root of the drive, but 40 hours of various recovery tools showed me that I
was just left with several thousand files called
????????.??? etc (examination of these files showed no data of any use)

At no stage did the drive make strange noises, it just "stopped" always at
the same points - the beginning, about 30%, and about 70%.
It would "stick there for 3-8 minutes, then quite happily move on.

I rebuilt the pc with a new drive, said "sorry, I can't do it but here's the
drive", and left him with a full report and a "how to and why you should
backup weekly". I then spoke to some very snooty sounding chap who said:
"Well, you clearly don't know what you're doing. First rule is NEVER attempt
recovery on a bad drive - always just swap the platters into another hard
drive and most of the time, the data comes back".

"Just swap the platters"....

http://hackaday.com/entry/1234000840067578/

Riiight.

PC repair isn't my life's work, but I've done a little hard drive recovery
(about 9) - of which roughly 7 required
fdisk /mbr
and the other two were just a case of drop into another pc, backup data,
surface scan, restore windows.

And what's the chance of finding an old identical chassis from a 5 year old
drive?
Click to expand...


Did you try to recover data to the same drive?
Have you reformatted it?
 
Jonathan said:
No and no. Haven't written anything to it - only ran diagnostic and recovery
tools.
Click to expand...

Then it probably is a corrupted FAT, try the following:

Get Restorer2000 Professional or GetDataBack (there is a NTFS and a FAT
version).

Install the HD as a slave in another system; it is strongly preferred
that you connect it directly to the motherboard. Use USB or Firewire
only if you have to.

After the software is done searching and rebuilding, there might be
some files without directory structure; this doesn't mean that the data
isn't there, so check them out.

I have had about 15 hard drives, and 2 of them have gone physically
bad, both were Maxtors.
 
Jonathan said:
Dead Maxtor HDD. Powermax confirms it can see it, says there's drive
error.
Oddly, SMART reports OK. But I have only been able to get tools to see
this drive by booting PC, then removing cable from HDD *just* after the
POST beep, then reconnecting cable as soon as CD spins.
Otherwise, the HDD activity light stays on and nothing happens.

Spinrite wants 584 hours (584 hours = 3.47619048 weeks - thanks google!)
and counting, Disk Commander freezes for 10 minutes at a time.

Is there any more "rough and ready" recovery tool? The data isn't valuable
enough to pay £100's to a specialist firm, but we'd like as much of it
back as possible for historical reasons!

Chkdsk strangely doesn't see the drive, nor does fdsk or indeed anything
except spinrite and Disk Commander, mainly because it seems the drive
doesn't have a letter. However, I CAN see correctly named directories and
files, in amongst the guff, via some browsing (but not recovering) tool.

Thanks
Click to expand...


A year ago I had a maxtor drive fail on me. Mine did a clicking noise. I
took a zip lock bag, put the drive in it, sucked as much air as I could from
the bag, sealed it, and put the drive in the freezer for about 2-3 hours.
after I Slaved the drive on a pc and was able to recover most of my files. I
was told to not wast to much time as the drive would unfreeze quickly.
Indeed after 10-15 minutes, the drive restarted clicking. I repeated the
freezing process but it did not work for a second time. My drive was dead
for good.

Now I know yours does not click, but maybe this trick could help. But It
could also kill it for good as well.may want to use this as a very last
solution.
Hope it helps
 
Get Restorer2000 Professional or GetDataBack (there is a NTFS and a FAT
version).
After the software is done searching and rebuilding, there might be
some files without directory structure; this doesn't mean that the data
isn't there, so check them out.
Click to expand...

Weird thing is, Getdataback does what the other things do now - it can't
really "see" a proper partition.
So, I tried scanning using Winternals Disk Commander - it's taking a LONG
time - it's freezing the PC up and every 4 seconds or so, the drive is
making a physically feelable "gu-dunk" sound - NOT a click.

Here's another couple of odd things - the drive shows as only having a fat32
partition, and yet this came from an XP machine.

Even more odd, the AAM (accoustics) were set to the very lowest possible
performance (128).

Could this all be the result of some kind of virus? He said the last thing
he could remember doing before it died was a defrag....

I wonder if there's any point in trying this "find old drive and move
platters over" trick?

A year ago I had a maxtor drive fail on me. Mine did a clicking noise. I
took a zip lock bag, put the drive in it, sucked as much air as I could
from
the bag, sealed it, and put the drive in the freezer for about 2-3 hours.
Click to expand...

Tried it, 4 hours, almost burnt my fingers on the metal outside! Removed all
air I could, but still very frosty.
Now, this time, it DID make a clicking noise, but then went back to it's old
"gu-dunk"-ing ways, with same errors.

If only there was a way of scanning ONLY the "non-bad" sectors, because
there are patches of "good" on the drive, but it's the troublesome sectors
which really mess it up....
 
Weird thing is, Getdataback does what the other things do now - it can't really "see" a
proper partition.
Click to expand...

Just means that the partition table has got corrupted somehow.
So, I tried scanning using Winternals Disk Commander - it's taking a
LONG time - it's freezing the PC up and every 4 seconds or so, the
drive is making a physically feelable "gu-dunk" sound - NOT a click.
Click to expand...
Here's another couple of odd things - the drive shows as only having a fat32 partition,
and yet this came from an XP machine.
Click to expand...

Some choose to use FAT32, mainly when they want to
be able to read and write that partition from linux and XP.
Even more odd, the AAM (accoustics) were set to the very lowest possible performance
(128).
Click to expand...

Thats not that odd. Most drives deliver perfectly adequate
performance that cant be picked with a proper double blind
trial and prefer the drive to be as quiet as possible.
Could this all be the result of some kind of virus?
Click to expand...

Very unlikely.
He said the last thing he could remember doing before it died was a defrag....
Click to expand...

All that means is that the intensive use of the
drive is what made the fact that its dying visible.
I wonder if there's any point in trying this "find old drive and move platters over"
trick?
Click to expand...

Nope. It makes a lot more sense to try swapping the logic card instead.

You cant move platters between drives with modern drives,
you cant get the platters mounted accurately enough to be
viable, the track spacing is too fine for that now.
 
If only there was a way of scanning ONLY the "non-bad" sectors, because
there are patches of "good" on the drive, but it's the troublesome sectors
which really mess it up....
Click to expand...

Well, I finally found a result! I found an old boot cd I was given, and on
it there was something called "Prosoft Media Tools".
I since found out what the boot cd was all about, and there may or may not
be commercial software on it, so don't use it professionally!*
http://www.hiren.info/bootcd.html

Here's how I got the data back:
Freeze drive in freezer overnight. Run Spinrite on the most likely area of
the disk to have data (in this case I chose middle third of drive as boot
section was so badly damaged, spinrite was going to take about 3 years to
get it back!).

Stick hard drive back in freezer. Then run "Prosoft Media Tools".
And there's the data! Prosoft didn't work before I ran spinrite, and
spinrite didn't work without freezing. And nothing else could see the
ata - it would either crash on bad data, or say something like "too many
attempts".

*I made no money out of this venture, as it was a free job for a relative,
and before anyone goes off on one, I didn't realise it was commercial, as
there are many "non commercial" rescue CDs such as
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ which also contain excellent recovery tools.
 
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