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HDD Almost Dead with Needed DATA

S

SKiTLz

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 3, 2003
Messages
2,664
Ok. Storage drive in one of my servers was working fine. Took it out to use the IDE channel to do some work, couple of hours latter I slapped it back in and my comp locks detecting IDE drives everytime. I have a LED on my board and the code reflects an IDE problem.

Obviously the drive is about to kick the bucket. I got it to not stall a few times but it looks like its on the way out.

I have it out now but I really need the data off it (about 60Gb). First drive I've had go that I need the data so Im not to sure how to go about it. What would be the best way to try preserve it a little longer so I can get my stuff?

This just made up my mind about throwing the cash down for a new Raid 5 setup...
 
Best way to preserve the bad drive is to not shut down until you get the data off of it. Especially don't touch the cabling after you get it to work. I've had ribbon cables fail on me, with intermittent symptoms like you describe, after swapping a drive out. Just something to think about, 'cause the problem may not be the drive. Anyway, good luck.
 
first off don't touch it until you have that raid setup and working ..cause using the drive right now might prove foolish .. get the raid 5 going ..hook up the drive with the data thats needs to be saved, get the data ,then take the soon to be dead drive and either RMA it (if you can that is ) or .. try check the drive with a S.M.A.R.T. reader and see what is wrong with it and if it can be repaired .. or

get a drive with 60 gigs free ...use a program like Retrospect and make a complete back up of it .. i personally don't trust ghost and have had horrible problems with it ( i lost 113 gigs of DVD backups and MP3's :( .. just make sure you DO NOT use that faulty drive again until you have a solution ready to go ..

hope this helps
 
Chances are it could be the cable, but if it's not...
Disable SMART in the CMOS setup.
Boot it to whatever o/s you have and simply copy the data off. Chances are you will not lose all of the data, maybe not even any, but probably a little. My experience is there's usually like 1% (or some small amount) of that data that just doesn't want to copy, and you kinda just have to let it go or use a data recovery service.
Don't copy it all at once either. Like one folder at a time.
Doing a full partition copy may kill the drive by stressing it with bit-by-bit copies.
After you have all your stuff, be sure to reenable SMART, btw.
:)
 
If the data is that important- there are really expensive services to get it off a dead drive.

I looked into getting data off 2 corrupted DVD's (bad burn, but the data was there.. long story) and it was upwards of $1500 per disc. Good news for me- I found the data elsewhere on an obscure backup I forgot about.

http://www.ontrack.com/

"Recovered %99 of the data off a hard drive from the Space Shuttle Columbia."
 
Thanks for the replies guys. The data isn't important enough to warrant a $10,000 recovery bill. Its important none the less though.

I was thinking along the same lines of not touching it till I had a solution to copy too. So I'll let it sit tight for now and get my raid 5 setup.

If I cant seem to get anything off it... hows the freezer trick work? I've heard of people using that to get stuff back sometimes...

Like I said.. Firsti time I've ever had a drive crap out that I cared about so...

Cheers
 
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