Help with hard drive

[tom4bren]

All,

I got myself in a bad situation by not backing up my hard drive. All of my family pix are on a Maxtor external hard drive that the PC will no longer recognize. SeaGate was only helpful in telling me what I already knew & kindly gave me a number to call about data recovery services they offer.

Have any of you had to recover data from a 'crashed' drive before? Please let me know how your experience went.

Tom

[Kenny]

I've had to resurrect a few hard drives. Not fun.

It's been a while, but I had luck with Testdisk to make it boot or see it in windows. Then used Recover My Files to pull off the data.
I've also used Active@Undelete with luck too.

Sounds like you're lucky and it's not your boot drive that failed, at least you can still run an OS with software to revive the external HD... Hopefully it's not hardware that failed and you can still force a read.

Good Luck.

[kodiak]

One thing you can try is to remove the HD out of its USB enclosure and hook it up to your computer as an IDE or a Sata drive. It will give you better accesses and more options for recovery. The sad thing is usually when an external HD fails it‘s because it overheated in it’s enclosure.

[Kenny]

... also you can try the old "stick it in the freezer for a few hours" trick.

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/200...-when-you.html

[nfpgasmask]

There are ways to do it. First though, tell me what happens when you plug the drive in. Are you absolutely sure the drive has crashed? Or is Windows just not recognizing that something is plugged in?

Bart

[tom4bren]

I can't remember the exact error message - something about unable to recognize USB device.

I'm not getting noises from it that would make you pucker (like the read head dragging on the disk). I do get a clicking sound like it's trying to read & maybe not finding the zero sector. It was hooked to the kid's computer that crashed a while back & hasn't worked since. Since it was the kid's computer, it prolly didn't get the virus updates as regularly as it should've. Maybe it got attacked???

"One thing you can try is to remove the HD out of its USB enclosure and hook it up to your computer as an IDE or a Sata drive."

I was going to try that but wasn't ready to try that yet since the new 'puter is running Vista & I'm still learning it's idiocyncrocies. I really don't care about saving the drive - I just wanna save the data.

"It's been a while, but I had luck with ..."

Thanks Kenny - I'll have a look.

[kodiak]

Vista shouldn’t be a problem, Disk Management is pretty much the same as the one in XP. USB has a bad habit of rejecting HDs with problems that would normally be corrected by error checking if it was hooked up directly to the computer.
If you’re not hearing a constant “ZIP CLICK, ZIP CLICK, ZIP CLICK” or if you’re not feeling the gyro forces when it power up then chances are it’s just data corruption that needs error checking.

[nfpgasmask]

Yeah, if you can plug the drive in, go into Disk Management and look and see if its in there. It may not have a drvie letter assigned to it, which you may have to do manually. If you can get a drive letter assigned to it, you can drop out to a command prompt and run chkdsk on it. That should fix any lost clusters or cross-linked files.

Bart

[nfpgasmask]

Also, maybe try plugging it into another machine. Perhaps your Vista machine is having some weird issues reading it.

Bart

[nfpgasmask]

I've had to resurrect a few hard drives. Not fun.
It's been a while, but I had luck with Testdisk

Yeah, I used TestDisk before as well to recover 40GB of jpgs. It does work, but man, what a mess it is sorting through all those recovered files! Better than loosing them though.

Bart

[tom4bren]

"maybe try plugging it into another machine"

Tried connecting it to laptop already (running XP) - No Go.

"It may not have a drvie letter assigned to it, which you may have to do manually."

Wouldn't let me.

"remove the HD out of its USB enclosure and hook it up to your computer as an IDE"

Next step - I'll let you know how it goes.

Backup Backup Backup Backup

[kodiak]

Ones you hook it up to your IDE or SATA vista should run chkdsk automatically on boot up. If it doesn’t fix the problem there is one other thing you can try. There’s a program called SpinRite it's the best HD recovery software I have ever seen. If you have any I.T. buddies they might have this program in there position, they can make you a SpinRite boot CD. The last time I checked SpinRite was still to expensive for the average user. It’s used mainly by data recovery firms and I.T. professionals.

[kodiak]

The DVD Burner is your friend.

Backup Backup Backup Backup

[Bulldoggie]

A few weeks ago my Macbookpro was acting up, after the kids were playing with the Photobooth app. and others....
Kids do the darnedest things - "Art L"
So I did a re-boot

It would not restart.....
So I booted from the install disk, ran "Disc Tools" and could NOT repair the drive

So I erased the drive and ran the "Time machine" back-up app.
Nothing to lose
It did not take very long and almost everything was back including all the pref.
The good, nothing in itunes was lost.
All my movies were on the back-up drive.
The bad, the iPhoto Library WAS lost, (not backed-up?) I had all but a few events saved on other drives, but still hate to lose even a few memories.
I lost the Route 66 street nav app. but it saved my routes?????? just re-installed.
I lost the NG Topo maps app. but still have all the disc image data files?????

Anyway, I'm glad I took the time to add a back-up drive. (very affordable insurance)
Now I know the weak spots in my conf. of the "Time machine" app.
I'll be better prepared for the next time

[johnnyapollo]

Before you do all that there are two things to try:

1. Try a different USB cable.
2. Try a different power supply.

What happens is that the disk powers up from two sources - if either fails to supply the needed power the external will fail to boot. I've had repeated issues with my Lacie "Porsche" designed externals (both the 1TB and 0.5TB) and have had replacement power supplies sent to me from Lacie (2x on the 1TB).

-- John