Recovery data from a conked HD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Day
  • Start date Start date
John Smith said:
Hi:

I am trying to find information on how to recover data from a nearly-dead
HD. e.g. The HD spins and makes clicking noises.

What I'd like to do is to find out how I can extract data from it. Yes, I am
aware there are specialists out there who can recover data, but I want to
know how to do it myself.
Click to expand...

IF all else fails, you can try some sophisticated techniques. For me,
freezing the drive overnight helped give it 40 minutes of additional life
until the COD (click of death) came back. This was enough time to backup
the data, etc. Be aware of condensation, didn't bother me but that could be
luck.

A fellow IT guy also told me that dropping it or hitting it with a hammer
worked, but I have never tried this.
 
John Smith said:
Hi:

I am trying to find information on how to recover data from a nearly-dead
HD. e.g. The HD spins and makes clicking noises.

What I'd like to do is to find out how I can extract data from it. Yes, I am
aware there are specialists out there who can recover data, but I want to
know how to do it myself.

TIA


You might try hooking it as a "slave" to a working computer. You might be
Click to expand...
able to access it.
 
IF all else fails, you can try some sophisticated techniques. For me,
freezing the drive overnight helped give it 40 minutes of additional life
until the COD (click of death) came back. This was enough time to backup
the data, etc. Be aware of condensation, didn't bother me but that could be
luck.

A fellow IT guy also told me that dropping it or hitting it with a hammer
worked, but I have never tried this.
Click to expand...

Heh.heh.
Had to do the fridge trick with a pal's Maxtor.Got the Data off and
Maxtor honoured their 3 year warranty no quibbles :)



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Free Windows/PC help,
It's a G not a J in jmx to reply :)
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If you happen to have several thousand dollars worth of disk recovery
equipment laying around you should have no problem. Otherwise ...
 
Hi:

I am trying to find information on how to recover data from a nearly-dead
HD. e.g. The HD spins and makes clicking noises.

What I'd like to do is to find out how I can extract data from it. Yes, I am
aware there are specialists out there who can recover data, but I want to
know how to do it myself.

TIA
 
gorf said:
I

IF all else fails, you can try some sophisticated techniques. For me,
freezing the drive overnight helped give it 40 minutes of additional life
until the COD (click of death) came back. This was enough time to backup
the data, etc. Be aware of condensation, didn't bother me but that could be
luck.

A fellow IT guy also told me that dropping it or hitting it with a hammer
worked, but I have never tried this.
Click to expand...

Thanks... the darn thing is going into fridge now.
 
Yes Just give it a light tap with a hammer and it should spring into
life for long enough for you to recover your stuff!!!
 
In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, Msg ID: <[email protected]>
Hi:

Just curious... if I had the budget, what kind of disk recovery equipment
would I need?
Click to expand...

Based on what you've said:
The drive is trash for all intents and purposes.
Click to expand...
It's probably trash, period.
I am trying to find information on how to recover data from a nearly-dead HD.
Click to expand...
It sounds like you are wanting to understand the difference between:
Nearly dead, and hopelessly dead.
e.g. The HD spins
Click to expand...
e.g means 'for example".
Spin means the spindle motor turns.
(Maybe not fast enough though..)
and makes clicking noises.
Click to expand...
Means the head suspension is banging against a "hard stop".
Not a hopefull sign.

IF it can recover, it probably means:
1. The drive is getting too hot.
2. IF it was windoz that you were running, the drive has a soft error.
a) The fix is let the drive cool off,
b) Run a diagnostic pgm that tests and marks soft errors as bad.
(Not Scandisk..)

IF it doesn't recover it's trash.
Take the cover off the drive, and see what you broke.
If it looks good, and spins good there's the side of the platter(s)
you can't see, and heads that could have gone bad.
- The servo tracks (depends on the mfg/type drive, etc..)
are usually on the underside of the bottom platter.
A servo track writer costs BIG bucks..
(You are now getting into drive manufaturing, not a recovery thingie)
But if it's only the heads that are NG, it's only a software thingie
to re-align the heads.
You just need to have a supply of head suspensions from the same
manufacturer, at the same EC level as the ones in your drive.
- They use them till gone, and throw away extra parts so ...
But a whole set from another drive should work just fine.

IF all you want is the DATA, that's another matter..
You can also buy special hardware that doesn't need servo tracks.

IF you'd heard scrapping sounds..
Look for pices of aluminum dust all over every thing.

Don't give up quite yet though.
There's still hope.

IF you have enough money, like the FBI, CIA does.
There's hardly anything you can't do.
 
I had a problem with a damaged HD. Couldn't access it with WinME or
Win2K (I think WinME tries to fix things and can make them worse).
I eventually got all the data off by making it a slave to a HD with
Linux installed. Then (without mounting the slave disk under linux)
access the device directly via the 'dd' command. I had to do this
block by block, abandoning when it started grinding. Eventually you
get an idea where the damage is and skirt around it. Then the
interesting bit starts. I had to read up on FAT32 to work out how to
rebuild the files. Luckily for me it was FAT32 and there weren't many
files. I guess this would be a last resort for a disk with physical
damage.
 
gorf said:
I

IF all else fails, you can try some sophisticated techniques. For me,
freezing the drive overnight helped give it 40 minutes of additional life
until the COD (click of death) came back. This was enough time to backup
the data, etc. Be aware of condensation, didn't bother me but that could be
luck.

A fellow IT guy also told me that dropping it or hitting it with a hammer
worked, but I have never tried this.
Click to expand...

i've tried the "freezing" trick 3 or 4 times with no luck...
but just recently got a 20gig drive 100% recovered after freezing it...
it worked for several hours...
plenty of time to make an image file
 
Hi:

Just curious... if I had the budget, what kind of disk recovery equipment
would I need?

TIA
 
In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, Msg ID: <[email protected]>
I had a problem with a damaged HD. Couldn't access it with WinME or
Win2K (I think WinME tries to fix things and can make them worse).
I eventually got all the data off by making it a slave to a HD with
Linux installed. Then (without mounting the slave disk under linux)
access the device directly via the 'dd' command. I had to do this
block by block, abandoning when it started grinding. Eventually you
get an idea where the damage is and skirt around it. Then the
interesting bit starts. I had to read up on FAT32 to work out how to
rebuild the files. Luckily for me it was FAT32 and there weren't many
files. I guess this would be a last resort for a disk with physical
damage.
Click to expand...

Your problem was quite different that the OPs.
Your drive was able to initialize, his was not.
Your method is the hard way to do what you did.

This is why mounting the disk as a slave works
for accessing a disk that will not boot windoz.

All versions of windoz following win 95 will invoke
Scandisk on all drives acessed during a "failed" session.

**** Unless you know what you are doing,
**** Letting it fix things is NOT a good idea.

IF you had booted on the Western Digital floppy diskette
You could have made a copy of all or even selected partitions
of the hard drive to another drive.
The other drive only needs to be =/> than the source.
 
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