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Retrieve Data from broken Drive

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sbudzynski

sbudzynski

Technical User
Jul 7, 2005
462
US
Is there any way to retrieve data from a messed up harddrive without paying for the software advertised by WD?

Thanks,

PS. Its a Western Digital Caviar SE160g SATA harddrive, its been put into an external enclosure and has only been used from 2 or so months maybe 5 times. It is never left on only when transferring data. The harddrive comes up in the safely remove hardware dialogue but does not appear on my computer.

Also when I turn it on I hear a series of beeps...

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"
 
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Well there are many other data recovering apps you can use it doesn;t have to be the Western Digital one.

But most of them require you to pay for them.

You can try:
Pc Inspector which is free of charge, but I cannot not vouch for it.

I would however highly recommend
GetDataBack although its a bit expensive if theres an ything to be recovered it will recover it.


----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
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pcinspector said:
PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x cannot help if you have mechanical problems with the disk drive. If the hard disk is no longer recognised by the BIOS or is making unusual noises, you should contact the specialists, "CONVAR - The Recovery Team". They will certainly be able to help.
Click to expand...

I guess a free fix might take more effort then shelling out the dough... I'll look around at some of these prices and see what I find.

Thank you Vacunita for your help

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"
 
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sbudzynski said:
PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x cannot help if you have mechanical problems with the disk drive. If the hard disk is no longer recognised by the BIOS or is making unusual noises, you should contact the specialists, "CONVAR - The Recovery Team". They will certainly be able to help.
Click to expand...

You never mentioned anything about strange noises or mechanical problems. Beeps are not strange noices. However As long as Windows picks it up in the Safely remove hardware dialog. it should in theory be able to recover the data. Again can't vouch for Pc inspector, but GetDataback would almost certainly be able to.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
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Have you tried something more simple like internally installing it as a slave on your own pc?

You'll never know...
 
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Oh, I thought beeps were strange noises, they were atleast strange to me since I had never heard them before! (maybe if you heard these beeps you would understand, its like beep beep beeeep pause beep beep beeeep over and over again.

[offtopic] what do these beeps mean?? Is it like harddrive morse code?[/offtopic]

I'll try that roland and see what happens. Thanks.



----------

Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"
 
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Are you sure the beeps are emanating from the drive and not the MoBo?
It may be that the Drive partitions are corrputed, in which case the likes of O&O Disk Recovery will probably be able to help you (Google it)

Personally, I've never been a fan of external enclosures, but could the removing/replacing have damaged the IDE pins?

HTH

JaG

yosherrs.gif

[tt]'Very funny, Scotty... Now Beam down my clothes.'[/tt]
​
 
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Usually beeps are inidcaton of a problem, and depending on the hardware can mean different things.

so |i would know extactly what they mean. Probably an indication of a dirve problem or iminent failure. In any case roland63 has a good point. If you have a spare Sata cable and plug on your motherboard.

Remember turn off your PC before tampering with its insides.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks Guys, I'm going to try that today and see what happens.

----------

Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"
 
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No luck friends, the files aren't important enough to pay money for but I would like to get back. Mostly movies, tv shows, all my school files, and my pictures. Oh well, I'll see how much it costs to retrieve and maybe stop being so cheap!

Thanks for all of your help

----------

Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"
 
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I can't get GetDataBack, it won't install, maybe a problem on their side?

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"
 
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Nevermind I found on at download(dot)com. I installed it and am currently trying to find my drive which it doesn't seem to be locating...

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"
 
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Yeah I tried it on a few PCs.. no luck

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"
 
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Give SpinRite a try from
In my experience if this doesn't work nothing will.

Ed Metcalfe.

Please do not feed the trolls.....
 
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