Data Recovery HELP!

TheGeekFreek

TheGeekFreek

Supreme [H]ardness
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Joined
Mar 31, 2005
Messages
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Here is what ive got..

MAXTOR
Diamond Max 10
Model: 6L200P0
200gb PATA133 HDD
28JAN2006


Drive crapped out on me.. I have it hooked up via a USB2 enclosure but I have also hooked it up directly to an IDE interface.. Get the same results with both..

The drive spins up, the auto run will go for about 15 seconds, it acts like its working but never actually shows any files.. If I try and access the HDD it says its invalid.. I ran MAXTOR tools for USB drives and it gets 15 consecutive errors and stops because it says it may cause data loss.. I think it was at sector 3655-3570 .. somewhere in that area..

I have about 12 years worth of data on this drive and I REALLY need to recover at LEAST my pictures, and hopefully my Music.. I just defregged a few days back and it was working fine so im not sure what else to do.. Data recoverys is something I havent messed with much, but ANY help would be appreciated.. Im looking into buying a new drive and swapping the daughterboard to see if thatll help.. but it seems to me that all the errors are on the platters themselves, that, or the file table is all screwed up..

Any Ideas?
 
Try Spinwrite. You do have to pay for the program but it will temporarily fix your hard drive.
 
Just tried to image my drive.. my stupid ass didnt realize it images the ENTIRE drive, not just the used space.. So, Now I gotta get me a new HDD before I can try anything, but hopefully something works.. Ill give that Spinrite a try when I can..
 
How big is the image? If it's not that big i'd give it a crack for you, but i'm guessing it's over 20gigs. You might just have a bad file table or something.
 
damn all that pr0n lost man !!! you must feel like crap now !! hehe, well i´d recommend to you to go to the pros there are several companies that specialized im data recovery just google them, a good company that pretty much save all my data is www.drivesavers.com
 
leSLIe said:
damn all that pr0n lost man !!! you must feel like crap now
Click to expand...

Everyone Keeps saying that...Am I like the only person who DOESNT have porn on their computer? ..... Must be... Anyways... Looks like im gonna have to order a 400gb external drive to do the image copy to and hope it works.. And while I was pissed today I wrote this on my MySpace...


A Poem to MAXTOR

You Suck......
You Drives Run hot, They Fail completely
You can all Just die, and EAT ME!
The lack of S.M.A.R.T, and and Noise reduction
Leave me screming "MAXTOR, OH FXCK THEM"
You worthless tools, cannot save files
200 Gigs of programs, music, and pictures with smiles
Never to be seen again, When will it fail, no one knows when
When will you learn, your hardware sucks
Halt manufacturing, Blow up your trucks
I know you, but you dont know me,
But I hate you more than Dell and HP
With a heavy heart I chuck the drive in the trash,
Muttering ,"You, can all kiss my ass"
But I have no more money at the end of the day,
Cant afford a TB, so off to RMA...

When I get the new drive, Up for sale it will go
But I must refrain from telling the buyer it blows
Once I have cash in my hand, to Newegg ill run,
FUCK YOU MAXTOR, WESTERN DIGITAL NUMBER ONE!!!!!

-The GeekFreek

(Yes, I know I said I threw it in the trash right before RMA).. Which I did, but then I recovered it to give it one last try..
 
Found an old program of mine Called HDD Regenerator.. I have V1.41.. The unpacking file will ONLY unback to a 1.44mb formatted diskette.. But I dont have a floppy drive, nor do any of my friends or anyone I know.. I downloaded the demo of the new version, burnt the bootable disc, but as per the demo it will only recover 1 bad sector at a time, but it is recovering them.. I got about 10 done in about 8 minutes, and did a surface scan of the drive.. Sure enough, it shows those 10 fixed in comparison with the last surface scan I did..

But does anyone know a way for me to extract the files from my old version to put on a thumbdrive or a CD or something?
 
OK.. I had an Idea.. Since I dont have an Extra computer to run HDD Regenerator on for a week, I decided to give this a shot..

I installed VMware, figured I could run the HDD-Regen program in the start up, and it does get there.. However when setting up VMware you have to assign a certain disc size and it ONLY finds that size disc..

What can I do to make it find the 200gb Drive that I need to recover.. It has USB drivers and things installed..
 
Ok, I found out how to make VMware see your currect logical discs, and I can see the 200gb HDD, But if I try and select it is bascially tells me the MBR is fxcked and it cant read the drive..

I can still have the program read the drive if I reboot my physical computer with the disc in, but only in VMware it says the MBR is screwed.
.
Is there some kind of boot process that neesd to be turned off to get VMware to recognise the HDD at boot without thinking its already running in windows?
 
getdataback

Great program, make an image file first, you do not want to try recovery directly from the drive. Make the image, and do data recovery from the image.

You're not the first one to be in this boat and you won't be the last. I liked your poem by the way.
 
I imaged the drive using getdataback but there was no hope of recovery from the image.. It made a perfect image, but only about 5% of the fils actually work so I need to recover the bad sectors to make the files readable again and thats why im using HDDRegenerator..

If I had a comp[letely worthless computer to use I could hook it up and let it just run the HHD-Regen for like a week or however long it will take, But I dont have a shxtty computer laying around..

Anyone in D/FW got one they could loan me?
 
Chances are, if you have bad sectors, there is nothing that you or any program can do to fix them. Your best chances are with a program like R-Studio or GetDataBack. I usually have to run R-Studio on a drive for a client once a week, and for the most part it gives you something to work with if the drive still spins up and there isn't a problem with the head.

MaxBlast will only write scanned bad sectors out, it won't fix them, and to be honest, I would do as little to that drive as possible. As stated above, get that drive imaged and be prepared to spend a little money to get whatever is still there recovered.

Unless there is a physical drive failure (mechanical), then the big recovery firms aren't going to do much better than you are with r-studio or getdataback. Some physical problems can be solved by getting another circuit board for that specific model of drive off of ebay. Although from what you say it doesn't sound mechanical...you hearing any clunking??

Also, I would be hard pressed to find a drive from any manufacturer that doesn't have SMART...more likely SMART monitoring wasn't turned on in your BIOS. I have yet to see a board from ANY mobo manufacturer (ASUS, Abit, MSI, Gigabyte, etc) come with SMART monitoring enabled, it's one of those settings that always needs to be turned on when I hit a new build for the first time...Date, time, SMART, busmastering, etc...
 
SMART was actually enabled, But gave me no warning or indications to failure..
I just said "Lack of SMART" because it apparently wasnt very smart..

But even tho I can only detect the 343K bad sectors, which equates to about 114mb.. All 144gb of used space, all my files, about 98% are bad.. An image dones nothing, it only barely recovers a couple files, my only other hope is that HDD-Regenerator. It says it does not change the files, does not read or write anything to the drive but rather reversemagnetizes and then remagnetized the sectors or some crap like that.. But its the only thing that I havnt completed and everythign else has failed..
 
ok - i breezed through the replies (so dont shoot me if someone said to do this)

as long as the physical media is good and the motor isnt shot...

but i did it last week w/ a drive that i thought was DOA and it worked (took 36hrs) and i got all my data backed up...

1. zip lock baggie, no air, harddrive
2. toss that in a tupperware container (even the cheap throw-away glad ones work)
3. toss in freezer for atleast 6hrs
4. go outside when its cold (sub 32F prefered) w/ machine and drive
5. run spinrite on drive @ mode 2
6. burn knoppix cd and boot to it
7. load up the drive (usb enclosure)
8. copy data to another drive / machine

i scoffed @ it too when it took 18hrs to read a 60gb 7200rpm drive (laptop) but it worked and i got all my data back...

best of luck
 
Evil Juggalo said:
SMART was actually enabled, But gave me no warning or indications to failure..
I just said "Lack of SMART" because it apparently wasnt very smart..

But even tho I can only detect the 343K bad sectors, which equates to about 114mb.. All 144gb of used space, all my files, about 98% are bad.. An image dones nothing, it only barely recovers a couple files, my only other hope is that HDD-Regenerator. It says it does not change the files, does not read or write anything to the drive but rather reversemagnetizes and then remagnetized the sectors or some crap like that.. But its the only thing that I havnt completed and everythign else has failed..
Click to expand...

I only say image the drive as a means to futher protect your data.

1. your drive is going bad...it will get worse. You don't want it completely kicking the bucket while you are working on it. Having everything on another drive protects against that...granted it is just as corrupted as on the original...but at least you aren't worried the drive you have imaged your data to is going to die.

2. When you are working with a bad drive...the more you work with it, the more you are going to chance further screwing the data that is there up even more. By imaging the data from the bad drive to another drive you limit the amount of I/O on the original drive, thereby minimizing the damage to the data as you go about trying to recover the information. Most drive imaging programs allow for raw sector imaging and the ability to ignore CRC errors and other sector anomalies.


Again, I have personally used R-Studio to recover data on drives such as yours. It takes a long time to scan the drives...a long time...but usually when it is done, there are tons of folders and files to go through. You can even tell R-Studio to search for specific programs, folders, or file types (i.e. My Documents or .jpg)

It isn't free, but you get what you pay for.
 
With R-Studio can you Image just one part of the drive.. I dont have enough free space right now to recover the whole 200gb, But i Just need to focus it on my "My Documents Folder"

If I can do that itll definantly cut down on recovery time
 
You don't *need* to image the drive. But if you wanted to, Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image is the software you would use for that step.

You can hook up your failing drive as a spare drive to another OS install with R-Studio on it. You can then tell R-Studio to scan that drive for My Documents. If it is there, in any form, shape, or fashion, R-Studio is going to find it.

If you do go for R-Studio make sure you get the NTFS or FAT32 version, they are two distinct versions. I believe they just released version 3.

Edit: I found the link in the Free Stuff forum here for a free version of Acronis True Image 7, you may want to get it and image that drive...at least one part of the process is free :)

http://www.acronis.com/mag/vnu-ati7
 
Have no credit cards.. and only about 60$ to my name right now..

Anyone here do data recovery for a living?
If by friday I dont have a solution im just gonna RMA it..
 
Spinrite is crap which will only make it worse. Just google some of the analysis on spinrite. I use R-Studio. It was expensive, but it was the best money I spent. You don't HAVE to image the drive but it is recommended. If you are in a real pinch, you can try a direct recovery of the My Documents folder using R-Studio. I've had lots of success with it.
 
R-Studio cant even find the drive :mad:
...

What else we got..
Ive made an image of the part of the drive I need, but it still all kinds of fuckered up..
 
Well, I was on the verge of packing up the dead HDD finally and sending it back to RMA.. I tried everything I could, and out of some moraculous event, R-Studio read the HDD, and im actually recovering my pictures as we speak.. well, as I speak to myself..

Its recovered about 150 pics so far and going strong.. Its having a success rate ratio about the opposite of all the other programs..

Other programs would recover about 1 in 200 pictures

R-Studio is only failing 1 out of ever like 50-80 pictures.. So im recovering a VAST majority.. But its not done yet so I cant celebreate jsut yet..



Pfft.. Who am I kidding, im already on Beer 2 and about to cry im so happy :)
 
Saw this comming.. It still didnt really recover what I wanted..

It recovered about half my pictures, but it was the half I didnt need.. I ran the scan twice and am getting 2 completely different results in the scan.. What could be causeing my drive to flip flop being good and bad in areas.. and most of its just single areas, but some are large area.. itll be fine one time, and bad the next..
 
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