Data recovery from damaged hard drive

I

iron

n00b
Joined
Mar 7, 2010
Messages
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Hey guys, my previous thread talking about my blown PSU which I discovered later it took out my hard drive with it. Here is my last post:

RAM tested with MemTest+, 2 passes, no errors.
Windows Check disk on functioning hard drives, no errors.
Ran Geoforms on graphics card, no strange behavior
Ran prime95 and othos for about 30mins, no errors.

Now, the broken hard drive:

Specs: Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA (link)

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All recovery programs I've looked at so far keep thinking the hard drive is about 33.4MB large, with a Cylinders-Heads-Sectors of 64-16-63. In reality its 1TB.
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GetDataBack seemed to do the best, recognized the actual size of the drive:

Step 1
Start: Cyl 0 Head 1 Sector 1
End: Cyl 1023 Head 254 Sector 63
LBA start: 63
Total sectors: 1,953,520,002
Bootable: No

Step 1/During scan

Many:
I/O Error 'Unknown error (65284)' reading sector XXXX on HD129.
until I choose 'Yes to all'

Index Allocs: 66
Boot sectors: 1
Files identified: 2 starts, 0 usrdef
MFT entries: 0,0 $MFT

Step 2 - Select File System
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/2539/step2c.png

Step3 - Recovery Tree
No files listed....


testdisk did the 2nd best, it was able to recognize the hard drive was 1TB big. Although says it can't recover the partition.

Spinrite noticed the different sizes/partition of the drive. Wasn't able to run recovery on the drive, even after all its warnings that I shouldn't

Ultimate Boot CD didn't seem to want to load any of its programs... Although, Ultimate Boot CD for Windows' utilities worked.

Western Digital's WinDlg was only able to scan the 33.4MB limited space. The quick and extended test, and SMART all return no errors.

HDTune only recognizes 33.4MB, no errors, health OK, able to read temperature.

and so forth.

Scenario 1
The hard drive is still in its 3 year warranty period. Although I have never RMA'd a hard drive before, I don't know the extent of their fixing abilities. Maybe they could replace the chip? The platters itself should be ok...

or

Scenario 2
I could format the hard drive, then try to recover data again, while hoping for the best....

or

Scenario 3
Use testdisk to manually set the 'geometry' (Cylinder-Heads-Sectors) of the drive, although I don't know them. May foobar things more?

or something else!
 
iron said:
Scenario 1
The hard drive is still in its 3 year warranty period. Although I have never RMA'd a hard drive before, I don't know the extent of their fixing abilities. Maybe they could replace the chip? The platters itself should be ok...
Click to expand...

I believe they will just send you a replacement; Not the original drive.

iron said:
Scenario 2
I could format the hard drive, then try to recover data again, while hoping for the best....
Click to expand...
If you format the drive, you will likely loose all your data. However, there are low level and high level formats. You could take your chances with a high-level format. Still, that would make me nervous if I had important data.

iron said:
Scenario 3
Use testdisk to manually set the 'geometry' (Cylinder-Heads-Sectors) of the drive, although I don't know them. May foobar things more?
Click to expand...

No experience with this one, sorry.


I would suggest trying to obtain a replacement board for the drive, if you are comfortable changing out the board.
 
DO NOT Format the drive. That will certainly wipeout at least some of your data and provide no positive benefit at all.
 
I believe they will just send you a replacement; Not the original drive.
Click to expand...

This is correct. You will NOT get your drive back. And they will make no effort to recover your data from the broken drive. You will most likely get back a refurbished drive that some one else sent back months ago.
 
Ok, no reformatting or RMA.

How difficult is replacing the board? I've soldered some electronics before...
 
iron said:
Ok, no reformatting or RMA.

How difficult is replacing the board? I've soldered some electronics before...
Click to expand...

You should not have to solder anything.

However, you have to make sure you replace it with the same firmware version. Also, most modern drives have information in their firmware about that individual drive, so it may not work. However, if the data is critical and irreplaceable, and you believe the internals of the drive to be intact, then it is worth a try. Certainly cheaper than spending a few grand for a clean room recovery.

Be very careful...........
 
How do you know the problem is with the board? I mean its way way more likely that you have had a head crash causing physical damage to 1 or more heads and 1 or more platters.

BTW, the other thread gave me NO indication that the PSU caused this issue. It's also unclear whether your old power supply was even bad.
 
Last edited:
I swapped the old PSU with a new one and the computer came back on, what else could it be?

As for the drive's board being the problem, I don't know. Its only a guess. Unless there is a better suggestion? :)
 
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