Crashed Hard Drive - Any hope for self recovery?

[mcentyre]

I've had a drive crash and need to know if there're any suggestions for recovery. I've tried alot with no success. It's a personal drive and while the data is important, it's not worth the $ that it would cost for professional recovery.

Hardware: 120G Western Digital 8M cache edition. Primary drive running WinXP Pro. NTFS formatted. There was also a slave drive, but it is fine. The drive seems to spin fine with no abnormal noise.

Here's what happened:
The computer was on and fine when I left it, but the next day it was stuck on the screen where you choose whether to boot into safe mode because the previous boot had failed. I cannot get it to boot into any mode. It just freezes when I try.

What I've tried (and it's been alot):
Putting on another system as a slave drive - I installed it into another system (Win2000) as a slave. After installing, that system will not boot. It hangs when it trying to load Windows. Bios recognizes the drive just fine. During the boot process, I get the message that the is about to fail and that I should backup the data.

While still installed in that machine, I have tried several utilities that I thought might could help including Norton Recovery Disk (part of SystemWorks 2005) and OnTrack (along with many others). OnTrack came the closest as it said it was retrieving files, but hung during the process.

I've also tried installing the drive in USB/Firewire enclosure. What I get is really odd behavior on the system I attach it too (that's been three). Windows recognizes that I've attached a USB storage device, but it doesn't assign a drive letter. The strange part is that the system start behaving odd like not letting me open Control Panel, Explorer, System, Etc. Once I disconnect the drive, all apps/windows I tried to open, open.

I'm sure there are other things I have tried that I can't think of right now. Besides, this is getting really long.

Thanks for your help and sorry for the lengthy post.

Chris

 

[garebo]

Just a shot in the dark, but you could try the old freezer trick as it sometimes works!
Make sure the drive is slaved and then wrap the drive in tinfoil to keep out moisture and then put it in a baggy and then in the freezer for about 6 hours.
Have your computer ready to go, take the h drive out of freezer and slave it as fast as you can, boot into windows and start taking off as much as data as you can, as fast as you can. If it does work, it will stop when it warms up but you can freeze it over again until it wont work anymore. It doesnt always work, i would say it works on about 1 in 3 but i can say that i have been successful doing this.
Normally you could try other ways but thats if you can get the drive to be recognized by bios and windows and if you cant they its limited.
Another thing i have heard of is if the freezer trick wont work then give one corner of the drive a fairly sharp rap with a finishing hammer, on the flat side of the drive. Sometimes it unsticks the drive that way, but its only used as a last resort when all else fails.
Best of luck.


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[jimp56]

download a trial version of GetDataBack and see if it can see the data. I have used this before with success.

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

 

[garebo]

I didnt mention getdataback because it doesnt fit the profile as mcentyre has stated that he cant get his computer to even boot up with the h drive in question installed thru ide or usb.
Therefore i figure that getdataback wont work, but who knows, good point.


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[mcentyre]

Thanks for the info. I looked at getdataback based on earlier discussion threads, however you need a bootable environment to use it. A friend gave me a bootable WinPE CD (same one discussed on the getdataback website) and I can't boot from it either.

What happens to a drive when it overheats? The only thing, that I could control, that happened to the drive was that it was in an unconditioned area on a day that got kinda warm. I don't think that's the problem, but you never know. What kind of damage would a drive inccur if it did overheat?

Thanks again!
Chris

 

[garebo]

If indeed such was the case, it would fail just as yours has, but it takes a fair amount of heat. For instance i have a prog that is telling me that one of my h drives is running at 86 degrees F and another is running at 140 degrees F and the one at 140 has been running like that for quite some time now, if the reading is even correct. Point is that it usually takes quite a bit of heat to kill a hard drive.
Was it in a very tight cramped space with little air around it, like in a 3 1/2 floppy space in your case? Or more in the open, say, like in a 5 1/2 drive space? Was there air circulating around it or air at all?
What is the ambient, meaning standard air temp where your computer is? Just standard room air temp?
If you try the freezer method as i described, which is very easy to do, and the drive works, then that may tell you that it may been been partly or totally a heat problem as the freezer trick only shrinks the metal. Again, it depends on the environment the drive was in in the first place, only you can be the judge of that.



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[Peahippo]

If the drive spins, it's likely unsticking methods won't help. So twirling it or putting it into the fridge are acts of last resort with little anticipation of success.

The next thing to try would be exactly what you did try: put into another working NT-based system in order to attempt recovery of the NTFS partition.

Make sure the drive is properly jumpered for the system it's put into. There's no reason I can think of for 2000 to hang if the 2nd drive is properly jumpered. Try to keep the recovery system simple, too -- like the "forensics computer" I keep at work. Take out everything from the IDE drive chains EXCEPT the boot drive and the sick drive. Try to put the boot drive as Master on the 1st IDE bus, while the sick drive as Master on the 2nd bus. If this proves troublesome, try Cable Select for both, and place both drives at the end of each cable (the Master position).

Past this point, you have to boot into an OS that reads NTFS, which in this case is 2000. When in there, get into the disk manager. If the partition is toast, it will look like a blank partition to the dm. This is not good, but it will tell you that it's time to resort to something like GetDataBackNTFS, of which you can obtain a trial copy to try it out.

And if THAT all doesn't work, then it's a game for the real data recovery pros to handle, and as you said, you aren't going to pay for that. If so, sorry.

 

[garebo]

One more thing, some hard drives simply die and its really hard to know why as there are electronic parts and simple mechanical parts, some or all of which are calibrated to fairly fine tolerances and its not too hard to get a drive out of these tolerance limits. Some will run every day and work hard for 5, even 10 yrs and some will die in two weeks or less. And heat is certainly not always the issue.


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[mcentyre]

It was in a tight 3 1/2 drive mount. The ambient tempurature was probably in the lower 80's. The case was closed (rare for me), but it has pretty good exhaust (large intake fan on back and exhaust fans on top and side). I don't know if this was enough to cause the problem or not.

Another theory I have is that the HD controller went out on the MB and caused a problem on the HD (it could be the other way around). Either way, I think the controller is bad too. I put a new drive in the machine and had problems with it.

Anyway, I'm leaning more toward the problem being with the electronics on the drive and not a head crash, etc. What are the chances that I can take the PCB from another HD (same model, size) and it work assuming something on the PCB is bad and causing the problem?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[garebo]

If the pcb is bad then your chances are pretty fair. Its best to get the exact same model right down to the exact same version of pcd. However, i have heard others on this forum, and i myself have had success with simply similar hard drives.
I do a lot of charity work, i get a lot of computers and parts thrown at me and i make good working units out of all the parts and so i always have about 30 hard drives around at any given time. I had one not long ago a 20mb, i think it was a samsung or fujitsu, anyway the closest i had was the 30mb drive, i swapped pcboards and it worked. I only swapped it long enough to get the data i wanted and then put it back, but it did work. And i have heard many success stories and many failure stories. The closer you get to an exact match the better your odds become. That is, if its the pcboard thats bad!

But like you said, could be a bad controller. You can find out for sure by putting another drive or 2 on it, or trying to do so.

I dont think heat caused your prob, based on your description that you gave, what with what seems to be pretty good fannage there, but its hard to say one way or another for certain. Its possible there was a "heat trap" inside the computer, or a "dead spot", where all is well except one small area that doesnt get properly serviced by the fans in the system. That can happen with a drive.




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