I recently suffered from a hard drive (it's data only) crash--I booted up one day to hear some sickening clicking and grinding of metal from my usually trusty 4.5 Gb UltraWide SCSI Seagate Barracuda. Windows booted up and the device manager showed the Seagate drive was there; however, it did not have a drive letter and I could not access the drive. My SCSI manager can see the drive, but FDISK does not recognize the drive. Data recovery services have given me quotes of $650+ with only an 80% chance of recovery. I would like to purchase a drive of the same model (only $99) and transplant the old platters into the new drive. Okay, my apartment is not a class 100 clean room; however, $99 and a slim chance of recovery seams more viable than $650 for data that is important, but not critical. Has anyone attempted such feats of recovery? Any advice?
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hard drive surgery
- Thread starter otter17
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CitrixEngineer
Technical User
IMO (and opinions do vary), this is not possible. Hard disks are hermetically sealed in a near-vacuum. It is not a complete vacuum, as is commonly thought, because a certain amount of air must remain inside the drive for the heads to float on.
Once the seal is broken, the tiniest piece of matter can clog the disk. Put it this way, a single particle of smoke could damage the entire disk, since it is many times larger than the distance between a head and the disk surface.
My experience of this forum, however, is that there is always someone that has tried this sort of thing with varying degrees of success.
I would simply say that if the data is important in any way, don't even try it.
Just my advice
...I take it you have another disk in the machine - just curious, because you said that Windows booted OK. Fdisk would not have seen the drive, as it is not a DOS partition. It may be that this is fixable without surgery... CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
Once the seal is broken, the tiniest piece of matter can clog the disk. Put it this way, a single particle of smoke could damage the entire disk, since it is many times larger than the distance between a head and the disk surface.
My experience of this forum, however, is that there is always someone that has tried this sort of thing with varying degrees of success.
I would simply say that if the data is important in any way, don't even try it.
Just my advice
...I take it you have another disk in the machine - just curious, because you said that Windows booted OK. Fdisk would not have seen the drive, as it is not a DOS partition. It may be that this is fixable without surgery... CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
Use your money for more pleasurable pursuits. Maybe even use it for a down payment on a tape drive for backup.
I would guess a less than 1% chance of getting anything off it.
Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
I would guess a less than 1% chance of getting anything off it.
Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
- Thread starter
- #4
I have three drives, one with the OS and apps and two with data. The data is from old projects, some of which are backed-up; however, some of the data, while not mission critical, represents a lot of work, which I would hate to lose. My computer will no longer boot into Windows w/ the Seagate drive connected (it hangs the system); however, my SCSI device manager (Ctrl-C at boot-up) will see the drive. I tried using Seagate's SeaTools software from a floppy disk, but it failed to recognize my crashed Seagate drive. Can I officially say that the drive is dead? Are there any other software options I might try before I begin dismantling my poor Seagate. Thanks for the quick responses.
Your drive is certainly dead. Only you can try is by replacing the logic card of your HDD with some good working one and try. I had done a lot of data recovery but no software applications are available for such failure.
After opening the drive, you can see the parts of the HDD and that will give you insight into working of the media but no data. If you like, you can play with it but only after forgetting about getting the data back.
chetan
After opening the drive, you can see the parts of the HDD and that will give you insight into working of the media but no data. If you like, you can play with it but only after forgetting about getting the data back.
chetan
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