data recovery

[Branners]

Looks like my hard drive in my main PC has gone phut. Probably got overly warm as my processor has been running hot for a while (54degrees tickover temp..).

 

It is coming with me in to work on monday to be popped in to a caddy to see if I can get it back, but as I have not plugged my backup device in for 6 months I have family pictures and videos I dont want to lose.

 

Anybody know of a good value data recovery firm?

[Homer]

I think its was DamanC that helped someone here a few months back get a faulty HDD recovered. There's a thread about it somewhere in off topic.

[Sakey]

If no one can help and worse comes to worse, our technician in work can get everything from it forensically. Would need to ask him first but I can't see it being a problem...

[caseys]

Bad blocks or just not recognised?

 

Stick it in the freezer overnight. Then try again tomorrow. Wrapped in a towel then in a plastic bag. Don't allow it to get frost on it basically or it'll wreck the pcb. The cold helps the gas inside the disc (I'm a storage engineer...)

 

previous thread (vogons are expensive...)

 

http://www.mkivsupra.net/vbb/showthread.php?t=184202&highlight=Vogon

[Branners]

Machine goes to boot up, does the POST and finds the drive okay, then goes to start windows and the cursor sits flashing at the top left of the screen and then says something like read error - ctrl-alt-delete to restart.

 

Thought about popping it in the freezer but worried that it would bring it back only for long enough to get some data off. The plan is to run it in a caddy on to another machine and have it running less time giving me more of a chance to get the data off.

 

I'm still hoping it is a drive controller error on the motherboard and due to the processor running too hot...but I doubt it.

[caseys]

Machine goes to boot up, does the POST and finds the drive okay, then goes to start windows and the cursor sits flashing at the top left of the screen and then says something like read error - ctrl-alt-delete to restart.

 

Thought about popping it in the freezer but worried that it would bring it back only for long enough to get some data off. The plan is to run it in a caddy on to another machine and have it running less time giving me more of a chance to get the data off.

 

I'm still hoping it is a drive controller error on the motherboard and due to the processor running too hot...but I doubt it.

 

Hmm, may be a bad block. Running XP or such? Tried booting from CD and attempting to scandisk it

 

Could be PCB or controller, replacing that's always fun.

 

A caddy would be a good idea, if at all possible to a block level copy - if using a mac I'd use carbon copy cloner or on a PC something like Clonezilla (http://clonezilla.org/)

 

Or peersync - haven't tried it myself - (http://www.peersoftware.com/products/peersync/peersyncworkstation/overview.aspx) you can download a trial.

 

I don't think I need to mention raid etc as you mention you do backups anyway and know you're an IT bod yourself, just unfortunate I guess on your backup cycle...

 

HDDs are pretty damn heat tolerant, some of our storage arrays pump out nigh on 22,000 BTUs of heat and intake isn't exactly cool. It's vibration or surges that generally kill disc if it's before their MTBF.

 

Hope it goes well, I also offer to try and help you recover it if you have no luck with your current plans.

[Scooter]

I think its was DamanC that helped someone here a few months back get a faulty HDD recovered. There's a thread about it somewhere in off topic.

 

It was me and he was great, my old DELL just wouldn't fire up one day and he copied all the stuff from it and also effectively repaired it with the caveat that it would probably go again. I plugged it back in and it fired up fine and I attached an external hard drive and made another copy for safe keeping.....it's no longer my main PC but i'm sure it would fire up again now.......basically he was a star

[Bobbeh]

I was gonna suggest trying it on another machine but as an external HDD or not bootable, just so you can try and recover files.

[Branners]

popped it in another machine as a second drive and the BIOS sees the drive but Windows XP does not even assign it a drive letter.

 

I have popped it in the works fridge and will try again later.

 

Looks like it will be going off to a recovery company to see what they can do with it.

[DamanC]

I wouldnt be putting it in fridges/freezers at this stage if you are planning on sending it to a DR company. You could potentially feck it even more.

 

"popped it in another machine as a second drive and the BIOS sees the drive but Windows XP does not even assign it a drive letter." - hate to say it but it does not look good

 

You can send it this way, but your looking at around £100.

[Thorin]

The fact that it detects the disk is a good start. I've had some success using SystemRescueCD before, http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

 

In particular the test-disk (fixes partition tables), and photorec (restores files) tools. If they don't work then the ddrescue tool may help, a little more involved but attempts to make a copy of the data at a block level.

[Branners]

taken it back out of the fridge.

 

Daman, I could probably keep messing with it but I think it would be best to get somebody who knows what they are doing to take a look.

 

Can you PM me the details of where to ship it?

 

£100 seems reasonable to me. Anything to get the data back really.

[DamanC]

PM on its way

[Branners]

thanks.

 

Hopefully they can recover the My Documents bit, the rest of it I can scrap, but MyDocuments is the main thing from that drive.

[DamanC]

If its do able we can do it.

 

What sort of data size are we looking at? I can burn it to DVD but huge amounts we going to need to put it on something else....