Need help recovering data from a failing hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter XxLicherxX
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XxLicherxX

Hello everyone,

I hope someone here can help me. I have a hard disk that seems to be on
its last breath. It crashed yesterday giving the user the blue screen
of death. I have been unable to access any data from it ever since. The
majority of the data is backed up on the network, however the user had
a small portion that was stored locally.

I don't think that it is an issue with the platters/thing that reads
the platters, because when boot the computer with it, the drive spins
and sounds normal. There are no clicking or banging noises coming from
the drive.

When I boot up, my BIOS does not see the drive, but other utilities
will see the drive as being the Primary Slave. The problem is these
utilities don't do much more than that. I need a utility that will
detect the drive and allow me to copy data to another source, if such a
thing exists.

When I attempt to slave the drive to another (good) hard drive, my
computer locks up at the start up screen. I have verified that the
jumper settings are correct. I have tried this drive in multiple
motherboards and always get the same result.

The Hard Drive is a 20 GB Quantum Fireball Plus LM

Any responses would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Dave
 
I have some follow up questions...

Upon doing further research on this issue, I have a theory that since I
don't hear any clicking in the drive, that the platters are OK and that
the board may be at fault. I beleive that I have another one of this
model in another PC. I am considering switching the boards of the
drives and seeing how that goes.

My questions are:

Does the theory I have explained up above have any credibility to it or
is it just wishful thinking?

If I do go ahead and decide to swap boards, what can I expect to see
underneath the board for connections? Do I run any risk of
contaminating the platters?

Thanks
 
XxLicherxX said:
I have some follow up questions...

Upon doing further research on this issue, I have a theory that since I
don't hear any clicking in the drive, that the platters are OK and that
the board may be at fault. I beleive that I have another one of this
model in another PC. I am considering switching the boards of the
drives and seeing how that goes.

My questions are:

Does the theory I have explained up above have any credibility to it or
is it just wishful thinking?

If I do go ahead and decide to swap boards, what can I expect to see
underneath the board for connections? Do I run any risk of
contaminating the platters?

Thanks
Click to expand...

First I would make sure jumpers are right, sometimes differnt settings for
"master signle" and "master with slave present" then try the cable.
I have used getdata back before and was very pleased with it, It has always
detected drives when dos/windows doesnt. http://www.runtime.org/
 
I have some follow up questions...

Upon doing further research on this issue, I have a theory that since I
don't hear any clicking in the drive, that the platters are OK and that
the board may be at fault. I beleive that I have another one of this
model in another PC. I am considering switching the boards of the
drives and seeing how that goes.

My questions are:

Does the theory I have explained up above have any credibility to it or
is it just wishful thinking?

If I do go ahead and decide to swap boards, what can I expect to see
underneath the board for connections? Do I run any risk of
contaminating the platters?

Thanks
Click to expand...

You can give it a try. At worse you may burn the board if the motor is
blocked. At best it works and you recover everything.

It might be a good idea to backup the data of the ok drive.

Nick
 
Thanks for the responses guys,

I gave that GetDataBack software program a try, it saw the drive. I
started to try and make an image of it , but after letting this run for
2 days straight, I got a 10 megabyte image file with nothing but zeros
in it. GetDataBack found no file system on it. It only did 20,529
sectors out of over 40 million in 2 days. Do you know why this would
take so long? Also the logfile keeps giving me error 1117 over and
over again, Do you have any clue as to what this could mean?

As it turns out, the drive that I thought was the same as this one, was
not the same. Although, I still would like to try this possibility.

I gave the drive the "drop on the floor test".. It now sounds like
something is trying read the platters when the drive boots up, but then
stops. The platters are still spinning and have no clicking noises.
Right now I have the drive in the freezer and am praying that this will
work.

Any comments/suggestions/replies would be great.
 
I gave the drive the "drop on the floor test".. It now sounds like
something is trying read the platters when the drive boots up, but then
stops. The platters are still spinning and have no clicking noises.
Right now I have the drive in the freezer and am praying that this will
work.

Any comments/suggestions/replies would be great.
Click to expand...

You should ask yourself how much worth is the data you trying to recover.
Would you pay 1,000.00$ for a successful recovery?
If your answer is yes, try to contact professional data recovery service and
tell them upfront about your past recovery attempts with the drive. They
might provide you with some valuable comments/suggestions you are looking
for.
Otherwise keep repeating "drop on the floor test", increasing height by one
foot after each drop. Make sure that drive lands flat. It has the strongest
effect. Don't forget to check for reading sounds each time. When drive gives
no sound anymore, open it up to see what's wrong with it. And keep us
posted.
 
I just pulled it out of the freezer and fired it up. Nothing useful
happened. It did the same thing that it did before. Drop tests yield no
results. I think the next step to take it to find another hard drive of
the same model and switch the boards.

If anyone else has any suggestions, please feel free to jump in.

Thanks
 
XxLicherxX said:
I just pulled it out of the freezer and fired it up. Nothing useful
happened. It did the same thing that it did before. Drop tests yield no
results. I think the next step to take it to find another hard drive of
the same model and switch the boards.

If anyone else has any suggestions, please feel free to jump in.

Thanks
Click to expand...

The more you play around with the drive, the less chance there is going
to be of a data recovery company (should it get to that) being able to
undertake a successful recovery.


Odie
 
A data recovery company is out of the question, They are far too
expensive for the amount of and importance of data want to recover.

Thanks for the input though.
 
XxLicherxX said:
I just pulled it out of the freezer and fired it up. Nothing useful
happened. It did the same thing that it did before. Drop tests yield no
results. I think the next step to take it to find another hard drive of
the same model and switch the boards.

If anyone else has any suggestions, please feel free to jump in.
Click to expand...

Changing boards was the first thing to do rather than a "drop test". The
symptoms described in the OP are those of a failed board.

Regards, Zvi
 
The more you play around with the drive, the less chance there is going
to be of a data recovery company (should it get to that) being able to
undertake a successful recovery.
Click to expand...

And the more expensive it will be. I allways wonder why people don't get
that...

Arno
 
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