Dead Drive - Recovery Idea?

[dbunder]

Long story short: I have an old IDE 80gb drive I'm running windows xp pro from. It also has the program files directory and a few other small bits. More than substantial. I have a 160gb Hitachi Deskstar SATA as my storage drive. My "Documents and Settings" are moved there. Crap like my desktop, my documents, my music, etc. It's also where I install and run all my games from and store all my professional photography and use it as a photoshop scratch drive. If you don't wanna read this epic novel, just skip to near the bottom and you'll get the jist of it.

For the sake of simplicity, my old storage drive is SATA1, my brand spankin' new 160gb drive with the new copy of the OS on it is SATA2. For the duration of this debacle, the only other drive in the machine is a Plextor 708a DVD-RW drive on Primary ATA set as master and a stupid floppy drive I had to buy for 8 bucks so I could install the Intel RAID drivers that came with my mobo (MSI 865 Neo2-PFISR) during windows setup.

Was running out of space. Quickly. Decided I'd go out, buy another 160gb Deskstar, unplug SATA1 and the 80gb OS drive (after getting some stuff off it and putting it onto the SATA1), install Windows XP with RAID drivers and whatnot onto SATA2. That part works great. The machine, with just SATA2 (with RAID turned off in the BIOS - I'm not ready for that yet) boots, I install the latest drivers for my components, everything is happy.

I turn off the machine, plug SATA1 into the second SATA port in my mobo, connect the power cable, turn the computer on. It can't detect SATA1 anymore. It sees everything else, but when it goes to see SATA1 it sits for maybe 30 seconds, searches for another drive, rinse, repeat. I let it boot into Windows and don't see SATA1 there, of course.

Reboot, go into BIOS, make sure everything is set up correctly (it is - and RAID is still turned off). Try to autodetect all undetected drives. No dice. Accoding to my BIOS I can manually enter drive settings (sectors, heads, etc), but it won't let me do it for any drive that is not already recognized. Figured it was worth a shot.

Turn off computer, check all connections, disconnect all points of failure (floppy, cdrom, usb and fw connectors from mobo, etc). Turn it back on. Same issue. No drive there. I pick up SATA1. It's warm and it feels like it's spinning. It sounds like it's spinning. No clunky noises suggesting bad heads or anything being scratched up. No yucky burned electronics smell (eww!). Just... nothing.

I fool around for like an hour, swapping about both sata cables/ports, power cables, removing more points of failure 'til there's nothing left there. I try just SATA1 on the first SATA port on the board, then the second. Won't recognize it. I try just SATA2 on both ports and it detects fine and boots into windows with no problems. So it's not the ports on the board, the power cables from the PSU, or the SATA cables. It's the SATA1 drive.

Since it's just not detecting in BIOS or OS (tried a Knoppix LiveCD too, didn't see it there either), it has to be a fried board on the drive. The controller just doesn't know what to do with it.

Shortly after this, I mail a friend who had a similar problem and ended up fixing it without having to pay insane amounts of money to a recovery company. He said he went and got an SATA drive enclosure that connected via Firewire to the computer. He plugged the bad drive into his enclosure, plugged the enclosure into a wall socket for power, plugged the firewire cable into his Powerbook. The Powerbook booted up, and right there on his desktop was his bad drive, with all his data on it! He simply copied all his data across the network to the new drive on his PC and all was well! Not a drop of data lost!

He ended up keeping the enclosure and bad drive to carry around to work and whatnot to take work home, bring mp3s into work to listen to, do whatever. The bad drive would only work in this enclosure though. Remove it and it was just a paperweight.

Neither of us are hardware guys, so our guess is the enclosure just somehow detected the drive using its own chipset rather than the on-drive board and went from there, bypassing the fried bits. Was this the case?

The drive in question has long since gone bad (scratched, etc) and he just threw it out along with the enclosure. He doesn't remember what enclosure it was, just that it was using an Oxford chipset. Oh, and both his SATA ports on his board and all his cables were alright like mine, so it wasn't just dumb luck that this enclosure thing worked because he was using it on a *good* drive. Just wanted to make that clear. :)

I've tried several other methods of recovery I've read about on various sites on my drive and nothing has worked.

Next step is to try this whole enclosure thing.

Does anyone know of a decent one I can try this method on? I've gone onto newegg and they don't have much of a selection as far as SATA->USB2.0/FW, and the local computer stores may not have what I'm looking for, or anything that'd accomplish what his did, The hardware stores are all very hit and miss around here. I'd like something under $100 (I've seen them for as low as like 40 bucks, but you get what you pay for), something quality, preferably something that looks sexy (ha, not required), not gonna easily overheat, and something that I'd be willing to keep around for some extra storage. I'm not in this to just pump the hardware and return it. If it works, it works, and the mfgs deserve my buck. No pref. between FW or USB2.0. Both work. Can't use external SATA drives since I have no external SATA ports on my box. So far, the Kingmax and Addonics offerings on newegg look the most promising.

Not so much asking for someone who has had my exact problem - just asking for someone to recommend a quality enclosure that meets my requirements and has a decent chipset on it. I've got a lot of hope for this method, so let's hope it works!

If not, I can just send the drive to my friend at Intel that can run the same process on the drive that Gillware does when recovering drives - only for free! :) I just like to attempt to do things myself first, and I always like to have new gadgets lying around. Heh heh. ;)

Sorry this was so long, just wanted to explain my situation and goals as well as I possibly could. Thanks so much for any recovery suggestions, enclosure suggestions, or anything else!

-j

[davidlem]

If not, I can just send the drive to my friend at Intel that can run the same process on the drive that Gillware does when recovering drives - only for free! :) I just like to attempt to do things myself first, and I always like to have new gadgets lying around. Heh heh. ;)

Well to start with, Gillware is a logical recovery company (if you can call a group of friends with little to no experience with data recovery or even computers a 'company') and will, at the most, run software on it. But since it doesn't show up in the BIOS they will hold it for a week then email an excuse that they 'Couldn't get parts for it' and ship it back to you. They are the butt of every joke among the data recovery rounds. For $99 I'll tell you what software they use - it can be purchased online.

Your problem would seem to be the controller board (PCB, circuit board, etc) because it suddenly stopped being detected. It spins up, so we know it isn't a 'blown' board because that would affect the motor. There may be trouble with the electronics on the board, not related to the motor controller. You would want to test this by replacing the PCB, but unless you're a data recovery center, you wont have stock of different makes, models, and firmware revisions to choose from.

Every now and then I come across a drive that wont detect in BIOS, but it spins up properly. With some I have been lucky to get them working, and it can be very simple. Start the machine with your bad drive attached, and go straight into the BIOS. The drive will spin up as normal. Let it sit in the BIOS manager for, say, 10 minutes. Now save the settings and exit, without changing anything, which will reboot the machine and force it to re-detect the attached hardware. If this works, your drive is suffering from a delayed index. It also helps if you can use an Adaptec SATA PCI card for this, as it will attempt to detect the drive much longer than your mobo BIOS. An external drive controller, being hot-swappable, is constantly looking for change which may be why your friend got his to work - it took until the Powerbook booted to finally index and come ready. Whereas on internal SATA it is only detected once, at BIOS post. If it doesnt detect there, the system doesnt reserve resources for it and it will not show up in WinXP, Knoppix, etc.

Beyond that, you're into data recovery for some money.

[dbunder]

Well to start with, Gillware is a logical recovery company (if you can call a group of friends with little to no experience with data recovery or even computers a 'company') and will, at the most, run software on it. But since it doesn't show up in the BIOS they will hold it for a week then email an excuse that they 'Couldn't get parts for it' and ship it back to you. They are the butt of every joke among the data recovery rounds. For $99 I'll tell you what software they use - it can be purchased online.

Yeah? I've heard nothing but good things about them. But it's good to know that they're a joke. :) That's pretty funny that they just use commercial software.

The recovery center at my friends' Intel campus uses software and very expensive/specialized hardware, and has almost 100% success rate. They've apparently recovered drives scorched in fires at other Intel campuses, even some stuff off warped plates. :)


Your problem would seem to be the controller board (PCB, circuit board, etc) because it suddenly stopped being detected. It spins up, so we know it isn't a 'blown' board because that would affect the motor. There may be trouble with the electronics on the board, not related to the motor controller. You would want to test this by replacing the PCB, but unless you're a data recovery center, you wont have stock of different makes, models, and firmware revisions to choose from.

There's a place called Weirdstuff around here that may be worth looking at. It's basically a junkyard for PCs and PC parts - but all tested and working parts. I'll be in the area on friday so I can go check it out. No idea how to replace a HD board though... any links online explaining it? Seems like the cheapest way to go, though not easiest.

The board on the drive has enuogh info on it so I can match it exactly, and if they had it it it'd likely cost me a couple of bucks. :)

Every now and then I come across a drive that wont detect in BIOS, but it spins up properly. With some I have been lucky to get them working, and it can be very simple. Start the machine with your bad drive attached, and go straight into the BIOS. The drive will spin up as normal. Let it sit in the BIOS manager for, say, 10 minutes. Now save the settings and exit, without changing anything, which will reboot the machine and force it to re-detect the attached hardware. If this works, your drive is suffering from a delayed index. It also helps if you can use an Adaptec SATA PCI card for this, as it will attempt to detect the drive much longer than your mobo BIOS. An external drive controller, being hot-swappable, is constantly looking for change which may be why your friend got his to work - it took until the Powerbook booted to finally index and come ready. Whereas on internal SATA it is only detected once, at BIOS post. If it doesnt detect there, the system doesnt reserve resources for it and it will not show up in WinXP, Knoppix, etc.


I will give that BIOS trick a try. Just let it sit there for a long time, you say? In the screen where it shows all the detected/undetected drives, you say? edit: if this is the case, is there a way to repair this other than replacing the pcb on the drive?

The friend I'm visiting on Friday has an Adaptec SATA card, so I'll plug it into his and try to recover it from that before I go out and purchase anything though. Sounds like a good bet. Thanks for this as well.

Beyond that, you're into data recovery for some money.

I wouldn't have a problem paying for prof. recovery if it wasn't highway robbery. I've called around to local places in San Francisco and have gotten quotes from $700 to... get this... $2400.

If I learned how to recover drives and had the proper tools, I'd be a billionaire. Infinite profit to be made there. :p

Thanks david. I'll give everything you suggested a shot before anything else. In the meantime, do you recommend any enclosures? The story in my OP wasn't bunk, so it's still totally viable that I could do it that way and save the drive completely.

[Slacker]

Switching the PCB is pretty easy. You just have to find the same model, undo a few connections and some screws and swap 'em. My friends and I did it once, luckily we knew a repair guy at a local computer store that had the same model drive and was willing to let us swap the PCB so we could recover the data. You could always just buy the same model from the store, swap 'em, recover your data, swap 'em back and return the drive. Although that probably voids the warranty in a few ways. Then if your bad drive is still covered by warrany send it back to the manufacturer for a replacement.

I'd try the enclosure idea first though as it's far less invasive. Switching PCBs you run the risk of frying the good one with static electricty, or with the bad drive.

[davidlem]

re: PCB swap - no, you cannot just go into a store and purchase the same model drive and exchange boards. Depending on the make/model, there can be as many as 5 things that need to match, and all of them are on the drive itself - either the label or the PCB, or both. Sometimes you just need a model number - if you buy a WD 80GB you could get a WD800BB or a WD800AB - totally different. Sometimes you need a firmware revision, like on Seagates - 3.05, 8.06, 8.15, etc. Sometimes the PCB is compatible but the ROM chip needs to be swapped over. Again, none of this is detailed on the external packaging.

And NOBODY has a near 100% success rate. Your friend is pumping his ego with hot air. They're lucky to be above the 70% margin, especially considering they're not doing it for profit.

[dbunder]

And NOBODY has a near 100% success rate. Your friend is pumping his ego with hot air. They're lucky to be above the 70% margin, especially considering they're not doing it for profit.

Was an exageration, david. :) No worries. I know success rates can NEVER be that high. I was just saying the success rate at his facility is EXTREMELY high.

Still haven't gotten any enclosure suggestions... anyone? Thanks for all the help.

[davidlem]

You're going to want to focus on Mac sites...like...

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/WiebeTech/SDK/

[dbunder]

I've found some pretty attractive enclosures at some local computer stores, all of which work on mac and pc using usb and/or firewire. Shouldn't be much of an issue to find one that has a good chance of doing the job.

On Friday, we're planning to hook up my drive to my friend's PCI (Promise) SATA controller, see if it detects. Then going to get the most quality enclosure we can find and try to pull the data off. Failing that, the drive goes to Intel for a week or two, and I'm positive that they can have my data back to me intact, free of charge.

Will probably keep the enclosure even if it doesn't work for my drive cause eventually I'll want more space or portable space, so it'd be a nice thing to have handy. They're cheap. It's not gonna break the bank.

Btw, I tried the staying in the BIOS trick. Stayed in for 10 mins, then 20, neither worked. The board is just fried. Bummer, really. Even gave the drive a little ding on the side with my hand to show it who's boss, but I'm clearly not the boss. :)

In any case, I'll have my data back in one way or another, and I'll likely have a RAID0 array (2 250gbs) up this weekend in my box using the onboard controller - my goal in the first place. :) Any recommendations for my second drive? It's been so long since I've researched quality of drives. Brands seem to go in cycles - for a couple years they're bad picks, the next couple they're good, and so on.

Thanks so much to all who have offered suggestions. If my enclosure idea ends up working I'll definitely resurect this post to explain what hardware I used and what process I used, just in case anyone else has the same or similar issues in the future and don't feel like spending $21,546,117 to get a measly 140gb of data recovered. ;)

[davidlem]

Best of luck to you. If the enclosure idea works, I'll be suprised (but not amazed) as its purpose is the same as the BIOS delay trick - no real difference, you're just giving it more time to 'come to'. Do not ever 'ding' the drive again, no physical impact is going to fix a circuit board - think about it. And if your buddy at Intel cant get what you want, PM me and I'll give you some other recommendations. I hope you get your data back.