Hard drive is gone, anyway to get data back?

[G]

If I had a lot of data on a HDD that was important etc I wouldn’t RMA it period. Wait awhile as a solution may present itself.

I have not read all the posts above but could have a working HDD acting as the system HDD, hook up the problem drive and drag the data over to a partition on the good system HDD.

[arcane whiz]

i have a workin drive but the other drive doesnt show up. cept for in dos. And it doesnt appear to have any partitions.

[G]

Go to www.diydatarecovery.nl and seek the advice of the developers, i.e., Joep & Tom.

You can use DiskPatch V1 to get your partitions back hopefully but if you do to be fair buy it. It’s not expensive and upgrades are free. It will actually backup the critical low-level files such as the MBR, Boot Sector & Code, and Partition Table.

They are very helpful.

I wrote the PDF file for their Windows based recovery program called iRecover.

Ask then what your best option is

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Here is a small program that runs from DOS on a floppy disk.
http://www.partition-recovery.com/
There is a free version which you can download which will allow you to determine whether or not your files are recoverable with this program. If so, the full program is $29.99 US.

[Lennyd33]

Ive had the same problem with hard drives like the one you described.

If its detecting - you can get the data back.

Use a program called "getdataback"

make sure the drive is on its own cable as MASTER w no slave present ( important for PITA WD drives)

that proggie is a life saver and has never failed me

Len

[jrad2350]

I hope you tried resetting all the cables the way they were before first, i had that problem, the drive would sometimes get seen, and sometimes wouldn't, and i switched the cables back the way they were, and it worked fine again.

Jrad

[arcane whiz]

Lenny ill try but get data back only works when the operating system detects a drive rite?

jrad2350 i tried that it didnt work. i will retry the suggestions when i can reboot ill keep u guyz update. really apprecaite the tips.

[Roraycr]

If another PC is available, try it in there before you RMA. If you know someone with a mobile dock or external USB enclosure, if you can try it in one of these, they wouldn't even have to crack the case. If the drive works there, you have other problems.

[willyb21]

I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago, tried Partition-Recovery and it showed all my files and told me the MBR was damaged and it could repair but after the purchase the program said it repaired the MBR but still couldn't access the drive. But at the same site they have a free program called NTFS Reader for DOS and I was able to recover 80 GB of backups from the drive. The Drive is a 160GB maxtor and Maxblast's tools didn't show any problems with the drive. It just lost all it's Partition and FAT table information. Reformatted the Drive and I have been using it since.

[Baddog]

NTFS Reader DOS Boot Disk provides read access to NTFS drives from the MS DOS environment. It supports long filenames as well as compressed and fragmented files. NTFS Reader for DOS allows you to preview the files on NTFS and copy them from NTFS to FAT volumes or network drives. In order to use the software you need to copy the readntfs.exe file to a bootable floppy disk and boot from it.

http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm

[Scanjo]

There's one more thing you can try that I didn't see mentioned in the thread. You may want to wait till you've tried other options first, but as a last resort you can give this a shot. Put the drive in a plastic bag and place it in a freezer for 24 hours. Get everything ready to go (drives the way you want them and case open) then grab the drive out of the freezer and hook it up. Don't waste time mounting it, just set it on an anti-static bag or a piece of cardboard and let fly. You should get around 30 to 60 minutes of life out of it. Copy what you need and THEN RMA it. Others claim it works miracles and I used the method once myself with satisfactory results.

You may only get one shot at it so make sure you have things ready to go and don't waste any time.

Good luck.

[Lennyd33]

Originally posted by arcane whiz
Lenny ill try but get data back only works when the operating system detects a drive rite?

jrad2350 i tried that it didnt work. i will retry the suggestions when i can reboot ill keep u guyz update. really apprecaite the tips.

No actually, Get data back sees it as long as bios sees it. Half the time I recover drives is because some moron deleted the primary partition. So... the os cant detect it but get data back does

let me know how it goes

Len

[omendata]

Sounds like youve damaged the circuit board on the hdu or the pins!

You could try getting another identical drive and swapping its controller board over - presuming of course the disk itself is ok which sounds the case here!

I would also check all the ide pins and in particular psu pins with a multimeter and make sure they have not broken contact with the controller board! This often happens with cheapo removeable hard drive bays and pulling , tugging that happens on ide and psu cables! Sounds like they may be making intermittent contact!

Not a job for the beginner however!

Intermittent faults are always the most difficult to diagnose!

If you can boot up at least once and have it detected in the bios you may stand a chance of recovery but to be honest it sounds like a job for a data recovery clinic!

Try it in another mates system first as was suggested , check for broken tracks on the circuit board you may be able to bridge them with a solder and wire temporarily and check most importantly the power supply pins and ide pins!

Swap to a new machine first!
That will rule out a lot including psu problems , ide cable , psu cable etc

Good luck I thnk you may need it!

Mind you have learned a lesson we all learn once!
After your first disaster you will never have another cos you will always back up in future!

[Lennyd33]

Originally posted by omendata
Sounds like youve damaged the circuit board on the hdu or the pins!

You could try getting another identical drive and swapping its controller board over - presuming of course the disk itself is ok which sounds the case here!

I would also check all the ide pins and in particular psu pins with a multimeter and make sure they have not broken contact with the controller board! This often happens with cheapo removeable hard drive bays and pulling , tugging that happens on ide and psu cables! Sounds like they may be making intermittent contact!

Not a job for the beginner however!

Intermittent faults are always the most difficult to diagnose!

If you can boot up at least once and have it detected in the bios you may stand a chance of recovery but to be honest it sounds like a job for a data recovery clinic!

Try it in another mates system first as was suggested , check for broken tracks on the circuit board you may be able to bridge them with a solder and wire temporarily and check most importantly the power supply pins and ide pins!

Swap to a new machine first!
That will rule out a lot including psu problems , ide cable , psu cable etc

Good luck I thnk you may need it!

Mind you have learned a lesson we all learn once!
After your first disaster you will never have another cos you will always back up in future!

Not that I disagree with your diagnosis at all - but a data recovory clinic. THe price to recover a hard drive is INSANE!!!!!! and even they dont guarentee results.

Unless you have the formula for COld fusion on that HD - forget the data recovery clinic. did you try GDB??

[omendata]

I used to work for one in my early years as a young whippersnapper techie leccy Lenny so I know exactly what the costs are like and yes i do agree to a certain extent!

But it also very much depends on how much your data is worth to you!

10 years worth of artistic work , programming or business data is well worth the recovery costs in the long run!

Its quite an involved process in stripping a drive and going through all the various tests - its quite cheap if its only the circuit board but a crashed head or damaged surface can take days to reconstruct the data and requires expensive magnetic disk microsocopy equipment so if you mutliply the hours by the standard techy costs you can see my point!

How MUCH IS YOUR DATA WORTH?

I know I have 15 years worth on my disk - Id pay up to £1000 to get it all back if it was all lost!

But then i back up to dat24 , cdr and two hard disk backups monthly - Just wait till I get a DVD writer!

Dat tapes can go bad , cdr's can last as little as 2 years before the dye goes bad and hard disks can get damaged so quad backup redundancy is really not that overkill!