Danp Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Offered to help a friend (1st mistake..) with their dying hard drive, it was blue screening their laptop on boot up, removed drive and plugged into my laptop with a caddy and I can see there are many errors with the drive. I can see the files but when I try and copy them they slow down and then after a few the drive fails to respond and then removes itself from my machine. Stuck the drive back into the laptop and ran Spinrite on it and that repaired enough of the drive for it to now boot up to windows but every task takes about an hour to action. It is now plugged into a different machine and is copying, but it freezes and fails. I have tried to image the drive to another drive to boot from that and it fails with io errors. Any other tips to try and get their only copy of 16gbs worth of photos off the drive? I have succeeded many times recovering data from dead drives so I don't want to let this one beat me.
AngryTechnician Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Could try the old freezer trick but it's unlikely to stay cold for enough time to get 16GB off of it.
witch Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Hang it back off your machine and run chdsk on it if you can. This solves quite a few issues I find. Then try and copy a few files at a time onto your machine or wherever. It will take forever but this way you will be able to narrow down which ones fail and leave them out.
Sunnyknight Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Leave it disconnected, untouched for a day. I had my old WD die out on me, but literally, 4 hours prior to that, i managed to get my data off. Leave it still.
Danp Posted April 30, 2013 Author Posted April 30, 2013 Could try the old freezer trick but it's unlikely to stay cold for enough time to get 16GB off of it. Yes, tried that before, dont want to risk it with this one at this stage. Hang it back off your machine and run chdsk on it if you can. This solves quite a few issues I find. Then try and copy a few files at a time onto your machine or wherever. It will take forever but this way you will be able to narrow down which ones fail and leave them out. Tried that, it did complete and claim to have fixed some errors but the drive has smart problems. Leave it disconnected, untouched for a day. I had my old WD die out on me, but literally, 4 hours prior to that, i managed to get my data off. Leave it still. Left it for 48 hours in an anti static bag in the same position as it would be in the laptop (upside down in this case) Spinrite ? GRC|SpinRite 5.0 to 6.0
Rawns Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Any other tips to try and get their only copy of 16gbs worth of photos off the drive? You could take the mean option. Bin the drive and say "serves you right for not backing up!". Failing that, if you do get the data off, be sure to explain just how close they were to loosing everything. So much so that they shower you in hugs, kisses and beer for your efforts.
Danp Posted April 30, 2013 Author Posted April 30, 2013 You could take the mean option. Bin the drive and say "serves you right for not backing up!". Failing that, if you do get the data off, be sure to explain just how close they were to loosing everything. So much so that they shower you in hugs, kisses and beer for your efforts. The riot act has been given out and they have already repaid me by replacing my garden gate, but we are all going to the BTCC together this weekend for my birthday so I expect to be passing the beer tab in their direction 1
Flatpackhamster Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Download RuntimeSoftware's GetDataBack. They do an NTFS and a FAT version. They offer a free trial and you only pay for the software if it successfully finds the data to allow you to retrieve it. I use it regularly for clients whose drives have failed.
CHR1S Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Download RuntimeSoftware's GetDataBack. They do an NTFS and a FAT version. They offer a free trial and you only pay for the software if it successfully finds the data to allow you to retrieve it. I use it regularly for clients whose drives have failed. GDB will probably encounter the same issues as the disk check and copy attempts but is worth a try. I have had the same issue before and could not complete the initial disk scan.
Danp Posted April 30, 2013 Author Posted April 30, 2013 It is currently plugged into a very basic machine with indexing off and I am able to copy the files a few folders at a time to the machines local drive. Every few files it errors so I am telling it to skip those. If my friends ends up with 80% of the files they will be happy
dany2010 Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Tried a linux live disk? Just incase it can do something windows cant?
chazzy2501 Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 I got data off a hdd like this by putting a powerful squirrel cage fan directly above the drive to really cool it! blow air on the circuit.
Dos_Box Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Have you tried to image the disk? That way you can pull the files out of the image. That's if the drive stays live long enough that is.
Danp Posted April 30, 2013 Author Posted April 30, 2013 Have you tried to image the disk? That way you can pull the files out of the image. That's if the drive stays live long enough that is. Yes, it failed every time. Tried with Ghost and PING as well.
LosOjos Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 If it's photos that you're trying to recover specifically, I've had some success with PhotoRec even on seemingly dead flash media (plus it's free so can't hurt) PhotoRec - CGSecurity
Danp Posted April 30, 2013 Author Posted April 30, 2013 If it's photos that you're trying to recover specifically, I've had some success with PhotoRec even on seemingly dead flash media (plus it's free so can't hurt) PhotoRec - CGSecurity Thank you, I will see how I get on at the moment, might be worth running through that once I have got most of them 'in hand'
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