Data recovery from crashed S-ATA drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter :: Ole C ::
  • Start date Start date
O

:: Ole C ::

Hi there.

Finally it was my turn to experience the ultimate harddrive crash. The one
were you were just about to make that big backup with six months work when
it hit you hardest. The drive starts clicking and everything freezes. I am
able to boot from the disk, but it halts shortly after the Win XP logo pops.
So now I cannot seem to recover any files from the drive. The drive is by
the way a Seagate 80GB (ST380013AS), partition in two with XP on one
partition. The critical data on the other.

So far I've tried the following:

* XP cd repair. Never comes past scanning the drive
* Reinnstalling XP. Never comes past scanning the drive
* The drive as slave and another drive with xp. Never boots. Not even with
just command prompt.
* Hot swapping the drive with XP loaded and running GetDataBack or
Restorer2000 Professional. Finds the drive but scanning only returns 1117
I/O Error.
* Using Seatools. All OK except when trying to read File Structure. Then it
halts completely.
* And theres nothing wrong with the S-ATA controller as an identical drive
works super.

As I have no clue and not nearly enough money to let some professionals
handle the problem, I feel I'm quite stuck in the shitter right now...

Regards from
Ole C.
 
Dead drive! No backups! No money for professional recovery! Yep! You're in
the outhouse.


--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)

If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
It depends totally upon the condition of the hard drive.The following worked
for me!

1. Remove the defective hard drive from the computer. Set the jumper as
slave.

2. Attach a new ribbon cable to the drive.

3. Attach a power "Y" connector to the power receptacle of the drive.

4. Place the hard drive in a baggie. Get as much of the air out of the bag
as you can. Seal the bag as thoroughly as you can, using whatever method
that you think will work for you. I used duct tape.

5. Get hold of some 1/8" thick foam shipping material. Wrap the drive with
4-5 layers of foam - all around. Tape it securely in place. You are trying
to provide thermal insulation here.

6. Place the drive in your freezer for 2-3 days. You have to really cold
soak the drive.

Now, make certain that the drive in a 2nd computer you are going to attach
this drive to is set up as a "master with a slave".

You may have only one shot at this - if it works at all. It may not. Boot up
the computer and as quickly as you can, copy over any files you need to the
resident (master) hard drive. Remember, the old drive, though cold soaked,
is in a sealed plastic bag with no air circulation. It will begin to heat up
rapidly. You have to plan your moves in advance and be quick when once you
start.

Good luck!


--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)

If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
:: Ole C :: said:
Hi there.

Finally it was my turn to experience the ultimate harddrive crash. The one
were you were just about to make that big backup with six months work when
it hit you hardest. The drive starts clicking and everything freezes. I am
able to boot from the disk, but it halts shortly after the Win XP logo pops.
So now I cannot seem to recover any files from the drive. The drive is by
the way a Seagate 80GB (ST380013AS), partition in two with XP on one
partition. The critical data on the other.

So far I've tried the following:

* XP cd repair. Never comes past scanning the drive
* Reinnstalling XP. Never comes past scanning the drive
* The drive as slave and another drive with xp. Never boots. Not even with
just command prompt.
* Hot swapping the drive with XP loaded and running GetDataBack or
Restorer2000 Professional. Finds the drive but scanning only returns 1117
I/O Error.
* Using Seatools. All OK except when trying to read File Structure. Then it
halts completely.
* And theres nothing wrong with the S-ATA controller as an identical drive
works super.

As I have no clue and not nearly enough money to let some professionals
handle the problem, I feel I'm quite stuck in the shitter right now...

Regards from
Ole C.
Click to expand...

There are several things you can try, all of which have a fairly low
success rate, but will cost you nothing aside from time and may allow
the drive to spin up one last time so you can get the data off - so plan
ahead and be ready to start dragging bits off the drive immediately if
it does come up.

The first thing you need is access to another machine you can connect
the drive to, since attempting to boot from the bad drive *then* copy
the data off the second partition greatly reduces your chances of
success. Alternatively, you can boot your system from floppy or CD and
use disk imaging software (e.g. Drive image, Ghost) to copy the
important partition to another system via ethernet.

I'm assuming the drive platters aren't stuck since you say XP starts to
boot from the defective drive, so:

First dismount the drive and try it on one side, then the other, then
upside down.

Next, rap the top of the drive sharply with your knuckles and try it
again in various positions. A slightly more percussive variation
involves dropping the drive, top side up, onto a hard surface from a
height of 2-3".

Freezing is next. IMHO the suggestion Richard posted is overkill - IME
if freezing is going to work, all you need to do is seal the drive in a
ziplock bag and freeze it for about 4 hours. Longer cold-soak times
and/or insulation have not produced better results for me - just work
quickly after taking the drive from the freezer.

Finally, don't get your hopes up, chances are none of the above will
help - but all have worked for me more than once and you may get lucky,
so it's probably worth the effort. Just last week I got 15GB of
important data off a friend's laptop after freezing the drive. He was
very greatful, despite having the pay for the replacement - I couldn't
make it spin again to wipe it, and he wasn't willing to RMA the drive
with his data on it.

You don't need me to remind you of the lesson to be learned from this
incident...

Good luck!

Sunny
 
ok , here's what you do.......

if you have another computer on a network, you have 2 options:

1 go to www.winternals.com and buy a 5 day trail of ERD commander.

2 go to the same site and order the 30 trial of the Admin Pak, it's free and
will get a 30 license. this program will allow you to access the drive
through a GUI without actually booting into windows. you'll be able to
transfer the info off the drive to another computer on the network. great
program, i have the full licensed version and it's a good sent in this area.
 
Thanks for all the response. Some pretty interesting methods of recovering
data I must say. I especially liked the one where you stick the drive in the
freezer. But I found another solution to the problem which thank God worked.
I thought since the drive was able to boot a little bit and some programs
like Seatools recognized the partitioninfo, it had to be some way of
deleting or repairing whatever data on the disk that was malfunctioning.

So I thought how about good old fdisk? And sure enough fdisk recognized the
partition on the drive (GetDataBack and Restorer2000 did not...) Once inside
fdisk I deleted the partition which contained XP, since it merely contained
the OS and no crucial files. I now tried to reboot using the other drive
with XP installed, but the drive was not able to start when the bad disk was
connected. So then I tried hot swapping it again inside XP. And voila!!!!
There the crucial partiotion was! Clear as crystal! And maaaaaaaaaaan am I
in a good mood!

Thx
Ole C
~ Time to make some good backup routines....
 
:: Ole C :: said:
Thanks for all the response. Some pretty interesting methods of
recovering data I must say. I especially liked the one where you
stick the drive in the freezer. But I found another solution to
the problem which thank God worked. I thought since the drive
was able to boot a little bit and some programs like Seatools
recognized the partitioninfo, it had to be some way of deleting
or repairing whatever data on the disk that was malfunctioning.

So I thought how about good old fdisk? And sure enough fdisk
recognized the partition on the drive (GetDataBack and
Restorer2000 did not...) Once inside fdisk I deleted the
partition which contained XP, since it merely contained the OS
and no crucial files. I now tried to reboot using the other
drive with XP installed, but the drive was not able to start
when the bad disk was connected. So then I tried hot swapping
it again inside XP. And voila!!!! There the crucial partiotion
was! Clear as crystal! And maaaaaaaaaaan am I in a good mood!

Thx
Ole C
~ Time to make some good backup routines....
Click to expand...

Good for you. You had the advantage of having isolated the OS from
the data, which most have not done. For future backups, look into
getting and mounting a second drive and then using the free xxcopy
<http://xxcopy.com> for the purpose. The result can be extremely
fast, and thus more likely to be done. The disadvantage is that
the backup is still on the same machine, and thus not protected
against fire and flood etc. You can cure that with the occasional
long winded backup to external media.
 
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