WD 2502ABYS dying!

Lol · Jul 17, 2009

Windows won't start, boot from Acronis Trueimage CD to recover a backup and
it says
"Unable to read from Sector 5.062 etc of hard Disk 1" when I look for
backups to restore
and goes no further.

There are backups on both another partition of that disk (as well as on
another seperate drive), but
Acronis is not finding them, and they are only backups of the Windows drive
(cos that's all I've ever needed before).

Windows is on partition 1, drive C:, all my digital photos and emails on
partition 2 drive D; that's the bit I want back!

Now I know that messing about is likely to make things worse
Before I start experimenting, some advice please.

Many thanks,
Lol

Arno · Jul 17, 2009

Lol said:
Windows won't start, boot from Acronis Trueimage CD to recover a backup and
it says
"Unable to read from Sector 5.062 etc of hard Disk 1" when I look for
backups to restore
and goes no further.

There are backups on both another partition of that disk (as well as on
another seperate drive), but
Acronis is not finding them, and they are only backups of the Windows drive
(cos that's all I've ever needed before).

Windows is on partition 1, drive C:, all my digital photos and emails on
partition 2 drive D; that's the bit I want back!

Now I know that messing about is likely to make things worse
Before I start experimenting, some advice please.

Think about how much this data is worth to you. Then get a
quote from a professional data recovery outfit, unless the
answer is "nearly nothing".

Arno

Rod Speed · Jul 18, 2009

Lol said:
Windows won't start, boot from Acronis Trueimage CD to recover a backup and it says
"Unable to read from Sector 5.062 etc of hard Disk 1" when I look for backups to restore and goes no further.

So physical drive C is pretty sick.

Physical drive D that you care about may be perfectly fine.

There are backups on both another partition of that disk (as well as on another seperate drive), but Acronis is not
finding them, and they are only backups of the
Windows drive (cos that's all I've ever needed before).

Windows is on partition 1, drive C:, all my digital photos and emails on partition 2 drive D; that's the bit I want
back!

Now I know that messing about is likely to make things worse

Not necessarily in this particular situation.

Before I start experimenting, some advice please.

Boot a linux live CD like Ubuntu and see what it can see of the
physical D drive. It may be fine and you can get everything off it fine.

Probably best to get an external hard drive and copy everything
from D to the external hard drive using the linux live CD and then
use it for backups when you have replaced the clearly dying C
drive and have reinstalled Win on the replacement C drive.

Rod Speed · Jul 18, 2009

Rod Speed wrote

Lol wrote

So physical drive C is pretty sick.

Physical drive D that you care about may be perfectly fine.

Not necessarily in this particular situation.

Boot a linux live CD like Ubuntu and see what it can see of the
physical D drive. It may be fine and you can get everything off it fine.

Probably best to get an external hard drive and copy everything
from D to the external hard drive using the linux live CD and then
use it for backups when you have replaced the clearly dying C
drive and have reinstalled Win on the replacement C drive.

You'll likely also find that just replacing the dying C drive and reinstalling
Win on that drive will allow you to see the D drive and its contents fine.

Safest to physically unplug the D drive while you are
replacing the C drive and reinstalling Win on that.

SwinePig · Jul 18, 2009

Rod said:
Rod Speed wrote

You'll likely also find that just replacing the dying C drive and reinstalling
Win on that drive will allow you to see the D drive and its contents fine.

Safest to physically unplug the D drive while you are
replacing the C drive and reinstalling Win on that.

As mentioned, I'll highly recommend removing the D drive physically,
assuming it isn't the second partition of a single physical drive.

In addition, if Acronis fails to find the HDD image, I'll recommend
getting BartPE, built the ISO and burn it from another computer and try
booting it up. You might be able to locate the HDD image from there,
copy it out to a portable hard disk (or even a network computer), and
restore it from the new location instead.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Rod Speed · Jul 18, 2009

SwinePig wrote

Rod Speed wrote

As mentioned, I'll highly recommend removing the D drive physically,
assuming it isn't the second partition of a single physical drive.

In addition, if Acronis fails to find the HDD image, I'll recommend getting BartPE, built the ISO and burn it from
another computer and try booting it up.

A linux live CD is a lot easier, you just download it, dont need to build it.

The ubuntu UI is close enough to Win so only a complete klutz cant use it for that.

You might be able to locate the HDD image from there, copy it out to a portable hard disk (or even a network
computer), and restore it from the new location instead.

Yeah, its certainly worth trying.

Lol · Jul 22, 2009

Lol said:
Windows won't start, boot from Acronis Trueimage CD to recover a backup
and it says
"Unable to read from Sector 5.062 etc of hard Disk 1" when I look for
backups to restore
and goes no further.

There are backups on both another partition of that disk (as well as on
another seperate drive), but
Acronis is not finding them, and they are only backups of the Windows
drive (cos that's all I've ever needed before).

Windows is on partition 1, drive C:, all my digital photos and emails on
partition 2 drive D; that's the bit I want back!

Now I know that messing about is likely to make things worse
Before I start experimenting, some advice please.

Many thanks,
Lol

Many thanks for all the helpful good advice here - all good stuff.

What actually worked was the simplest possible - by booting from my XP CD
,drive C: accepted a new install of Windows.

Partitions D: and E: (that had good Acronis images, all old Games, emails
and digital photos, were completely unaffected by this (for some reason I
was worried they'd be wiped), so I was able to get everything back - and
very quickly copy onto a brand new HDD and make backups elsewhere, on a
separate physical drive.

So now I have added to my collection of drives that appear to work but can't
be trusted because of having had errors in the past - anyone have
sugestions what to do with these?

The weird thing about Acronis not always seeing backups on other drives, or
giving read errors, seems to relate to mixing SATA & IDE drives on the
Foxconn mobo.
Haven't understood what the problem is there but, heigh-ho, its all working
fine now!!

Many thanks to all

Lol

Rod Speed · Jul 22, 2009

Lol wrote

Many thanks for all the helpful good advice here - all good stuff.

Thanks for the washup, too rare in my opinion.

What actually worked was the simplest possible - by booting from my XP CD ,drive C: accepted a new install of Windows.

Likely the drive just spared the failing sectors.

That would be visible from a SMART report before and after the reintstall.

Partitions D: and E: (that had good Acronis images, all old Games,
emails and digital photos, were completely unaffected by this (for
some reason I was worried they'd be wiped), so I was able to get
everything back - and very quickly copy onto a brand new HDD and make backups elsewhere, on a separate physical drive.

So now I have added to my collection of drives that appear to work but can't be trusted because of having had errors
in the past - anyone have sugestions what to do with these?

If its clear that its the drive itself, and not the system its installed in,
best to just discard the drives, they're so cheap now that they arent
worth the hassle.

The weird thing about Acronis not always seeing backups on other drives, or giving read errors, seems to relate to
mixing SATA & IDE drives on the Foxconn mobo.

Arno · Jul 23, 2009

Lol said:
Many thanks for all the helpful good advice here - all good stuff.

What actually worked was the simplest possible - by booting from my XP CD
,drive C: accepted a new install of Windows.

Partitions D: and E: (that had good Acronis images, all old Games, emails
and digital photos, were completely unaffected by this (for some reason I
was worried they'd be wiped), so I was able to get everything back - and
very quickly copy onto a brand new HDD and make backups elsewhere, on a
separate physical drive.

So now I have added to my collection of drives that appear to work but can't
be trusted because of having had errors in the past - anyone have
sugestions what to do with these?

The first ones I opened out of curiosity. Now I just throw them away.

The weird thing about Acronis not always seeing backups on other drives, or
giving read errors, seems to relate to mixing SATA & IDE drives on the
Foxconn mobo.
Haven't understood what the problem is there but, heigh-ho, its all working
fine now!!

Possibly just bad driver design or such a thing. Congratulations
on your successful recovery!

Arno