HDD probably had it...

[G0AOZ]

User with Sony laptop, Fujitsu 60Gb SATA, Norton GoBack, XP Home, was dropped whilst it was running! Still spins, no nasty noises, but drive has major problems needless to say. Some data not backed up...

Slaved to XP machine, recognised in Windows but no drive letter allocated. GetDataBack and SpinRite run for some time but freeze the machine which I'm assuming is due to the major disk problems encountered, as the machine is ordinarily solid as a rock. Chkdsk /R stops at 11% and somewhat understatedly reports "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems"! The official Fujitsu diags report error "A101T0", but doesn't elucidate further.

Any ideas? User has accepted that data is probably lost forever, but I'm just curious to know if anything else would work...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[stduc]

I've had good results from Spinrite in the past. Take a look at grc.com. It costs however, so you may not think it's worth it.

[navy]When I married "Miss Right" I didn't realise her first name was 'always'. LOL[/navy]

 

[G0AOZ]

Thanks stduc but, "...and SpinRite run for some time but freeze the machine..."

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[stduc]

Oops - too early - eyes not functioning, brain at 20% !

Have you tried Spinrite with the drive in the laptop?

Have you emailed grc for their advice?

Which Spinrite modes have you tried?

[navy]When I married "Miss Right" I didn't realise her first name was 'always'. LOL[/navy]

 

[G0AOZ]

LOL! No worries.

"Have you tried Spinrite with the drive in the laptop?" No. User's laptop had to be dismantled in order to get the drive out for attempted backup and initial tests. (Why do Sony insist on burying the HDD deep inside?)

"Have you emailed grc for their advice?" No, but will get user to do this as he has the software and licence.

"Which Spinrite modes have you tried?" It's SprinRite version 6 I believe, and I've tried mode 2 and mode 4. I have to say I'm not familiar with this software, never having used it before. I did look to see if their website FAQs, etc., made any mention of this issue, but none found. Was also looking for a specific SpinRite forum, but again none found.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[Kalshane]

"Slaved to XP machine, recognised in Windows but no drive letter allocated."

Out of curiousity, when the drive was in the XP machine, did you check for it under Disk Management to make sure Windows wasn't trying to assign it a drive letter that was already in use by something else? Probably not the issue, but I've run into that problem from time to time when hooking a hard drive up to an existing machine for data recovery purposes.

 

[Freestone]

With Norton GoBack installed on the drive prior to failure, XP won't recognize the partition type (0x44) so it won't assign a drive letter. Other than the partition type, I am unsure what other changes, if any, GoBack does to the file system or MBR.

 

[G0AOZ]

Yes, did check under disk management. Drive has two partitions, neither of which had drive letters allocated, nor could they be.

Currently left SpinRite running this drive at user's location. Since the "hiccup" appears to be in the early part of the disk's structure, I've started S-R running at the 50% mark. Currently it's trying to do it's stuff at 55%, although this is an extremely slow process. At least it has not frozen up yet...

As far as GoBack is concerned, I recently had a Dell with G-B on it which had a corrupted partition and wouldn't run at all. No drive letter in XP again, but GetDataBack managed to successfully extract virtually all files. Subsequently, GoBack was removed, and the system ran fine.

ROGER - G0AOZ.