Disappearing/corrupted primary when secondary is hooked up.

N

nemesis27

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 14, 2004
Messages
255
Hey fellas, I had a WD6401aals go awry on me after a O&O Defrag/reboot. Although it did shows signs of slowing down prior to that. However I purchased a new hdd and when I plug in my old aals to transfer files over, Win7 sees it, attempts to install drivers for it then it crashes my system (BSOD) and my new drive must be switched to another SATA port on my mobo in order to be detected again. In which Windows7 64 will then have to restore files to my OS in order to load/function. The corrupted drive has WinXp. I've never had a problem plugging in an old corrupted drive to transfer files to a new one before.

On the old drive when you would try to boot up, Windows would say it needs to repair disk errors, I let it run it's course and it fails most tests saying there are too many bad sectors to recover -or to that effect. I'm willing to pay a lab to do it if I have to but with so much personal info I'd like to see if you guys have any ideas on how to do this. Although I know it's not needed I'm willing to generously compensate anyone who can solve this as I'd be shelling it out anyway for a lab to do it.
 
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I'd buy a third drive, that you'll need anyway in the future for backup purposes. Use a linux based recovery CD to clone the defective drive on the new empty drive (sector by sector clone) then try to recover from this new drive instead of messing with the damaged one.
 
I do have another drive for backups...just didnt use it in time this time :( So, I'll need to either build a linux system or VM it? Any recommended recovery software?
 
he's saying you should boot into gparted or knoppix, clone the drive with dd, and then work on the drive that doesn't have mechanical errors.

the command you want (and please please please doublecheck the command when you do this by looking through the drives in gparted) is

doubleclick terminal and type the following lines

sudo su
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

where sda is the BROKEN drive, and sdb is the drive you are cloning to. do not get this backwards. this also works best if both drives are exact same size. you can find out the sda and sdb drives by looking in gparted. please note that it may not even show up at all in gparted so you might be out of luck. again please note, IT MAY NOT BE SDA AND SDB. BE 100% SURE THAT SDA IS THE BROKEN DRIVE.

after you're cloned sda into sdb, try it in windows and see if the files are there.

if you really want, message me on skype (gary.gray57) or aim (gunit4678) and you can send me a picture of the screen or whatever and I can tell you exactly which drive is which and what to do. I have nothing better to do tonight.
 
Ok, yeah that sounds tricky although I'm sure if I was using it it would make more sense to me. I will def take you up on that "walkthrough" JUST to be sure. Good point about the dame size drive. I will have to purchase another identical drive then first. Thanks SO much for this help. I hope it works because the quote I got was steep; from the lab. I was thinking hundreds lol, boy was I wrong.
 
you'd probably be okay just as long as drive B is bigger, it doesn't require 100% identical drives, just that drive b has more capacity.
 
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