Incredibly valuable data on dead drive. ANY HELP!?

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krizzle

Gawd
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Jun 28, 2004
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902
Okay, I have a MAXTOR Y250P0 250gb EIDE drive... Filled to the brim with priceless data for a production video. NTFS file system.

It somehow stopped working. After many hours of attempting all kinds of disk checks, it simply goes through, reports several unreadable segments, starts recovering files, and stops with "an unexpected error" at one point every time.

I really am quite stuck, I'm thinking of sending it off to a specialist.
Unless any of you can point me in a direction on how to recover at least SOME data. This is truly urgent.

Thank you in advance
 
the "data recovery specialists" are insanely expensive ($1k wouldn't surprise me), but they are very, VERY good at what they do.

It sounds like you have a mechanical problem with the platters and may have to contact them about it.
 
$1k... oh god.
The disk is formattable, i think. There's severe file corruption though.
I don't know how this came about... never dropped it, never hit it... I don't think it's a mechanical problem.
But thanks for the advice.

Anyone know of any alternate software that they have ever had success with?
 
If this data is truly important (i.e., people will lose their job/lose large sums of money if it's (partially) lost), you do not want to play around with data recovery programs, as not only might they potentially make the damage worse, every second this drive is powered may bring it closer to total self-destruction. Send it immediately to an expert.

Otherwise you can use the aforementioned programs, but at your own risk.

You didn't make backups of important data?
 
BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP...

That said, I'd send it to a specialist if you absolutely must have the data.
 
www.grc.com has a program that appears to get great reviews although I have never myself tried it.

But ias others said, a professional recovery is better if lots of money and effort is at risk.
 
1 word....RAID.

speed plus a backup in case a drive goes down (simply replace the drive and the raid controller will rebuild the rest). If you work on highly sensitive data, worth lots of money...then a good chunk of money would be well spent on a raid setup and a backup system for that.
 
Pro recovery is a must.. I've used a few companies in the past and in each case they were able to recover 80-95% of my data..

Mostly on notebook drives...

All the off the shelf software stuff is crap...(relatively speaking)

They are pricey though..
 
TheGameguru said:
Pro recovery is a must.. I've used a few companies in the past and in each case they were able to recover 80-95% of my data..
[..]
They are pricey though..
Click to expand...
You get what you pay for? :)
 
nst6563 said:
1 word....RAID.

speed plus a backup in case a drive goes down (simply replace the drive and the raid controller will rebuild the rest). If you work on highly sensitive data, worth lots of money...then a good chunk of money would be well spent on a raid setup and a backup system for that.
Click to expand...

I think the guy knows to backup from now on, the question was what can he do short of $1000 to recover the data? There are some good consumer recovery programs nowadays. Give this one a shot before handing the pro the blank check.

http://www.download.com/VirtualLab-Data-Recovery/3000-2094-10254291.html
 
Thanks for your help, and might i clear up that this was not MY HD but in fact my friend's... I managed to get everything using Stellar Phoenix NTFS recovery.
RAID is only useful in a harddrive malfunction that is physical. The drive is physically intact, but something has severely fux0red its file system. In a RAID setup, all those naughty bits would be carbon-copied to the next drive, and I would have two HD's to format after a restore.

Thanks, guys!
 
nst6563 said:
1 word....RAID.
Click to expand...

FYI, RAID is not a backup... it's redundancy. A RAID array, while protected from some errors is just as prone to having problems as a single drive. There are plenty of things that could happen to your array to cause you to lose information.

Regardless of whether or not you run a RAID array, you should be doing backups if the data is truly important.



Back on topic, glad you were able to recover everything necessary. Perhaps your friend has now learned the benefit of regular backups! ;)
 
animeguru said:
FYI, RAID is not a backup... it's redundancy. A RAID array, while protected from some errors is just as prone to having problems as a single drive. There are plenty of things that could happen to your array to cause you to lose information.

Regardless of whether or not you run a RAID array, you should be doing backups if the data is truly important.
Click to expand...

no shit? wow, glad you pointed that out for everyone...

the reason I mentioned it is because of the redundancy. That's also the reason I mentioned a backup for the raid system. That way you've got two levels of data integrity rather than just one. One more for physical failures, the other for software. If he's got a physical drive failure, just swap the drive and he's got almost zero downtime vs getting new drive, and restoring the backup from tape or DAT or CD.

If a Raid + backup system didn't so shit for data integrity and downtime, then why do 99% of the large corporations in the world use setups which use Raid + Tape library or similar setup???? It's definately not because they like to blow money on useless technologies.
 
^^^

... a bit on edge?? :p

I missed the very end of your original post saying that RAID + a backup was the way to go... hence my post. I only saw the first portion where you talked about RAID for it's "backup" purposes, and I see a lot of people new to RAID arrays thinking that they're the end all be all of data integrity. Just a clarification.

Sorry to step on your toes. ;)
 
Twister said:
www.grc.com has a program that appears to get great reviews although I have never myself tried it.

But ias others said, a professional recovery is better if lots of money and effort is at risk.
Click to expand...

under NO CIRCUMSTANCES use spinrite
http://www.grcsucks.com/spinrite.htm

with the caveate that Elledan made (regarding job loss)
1st elminate the possibility that its another issue
Corruption 101
in short its best to transfer the HDD to a box with known good memory, IDE Channel\drivers, and cable (no drive carriers)
then again with the caveate Elleden made
(regarding uptime to death in the event its really a terminal HDD)
you would try a direct scan of the sectors, for that Id recommend
File Scavenger

glad it worked out
but that doesnt mean it wont reoccur
so have your friend review the Corruption 101 ;)
 
animeguru said:
^^^

... a bit on edge?? :p

I missed the very end of your original post saying that RAID + a backup was the way to go... hence my post. I only saw the first portion where you talked about RAID for it's "backup" purposes, and I see a lot of people new to RAID arrays thinking that they're the end all be all of data integrity. Just a clarification.

Sorry to step on your toes. ;)
Click to expand...


not your fault...bad day at work....my apologies.
 
it's taking me 2 days to retrieve 50gb of data... this Stellar Phoenix is truly stellar.
I donno why the hell i'm doing this anyway... I won't get paid...
This friend is making a giant skateboad video, he's been into it for the last 4 months... I wonder why BACKING UP never crossed his mind.
Anyway, thanks a lot for all your help, I'm really glad there's still helpful people out there. :)
 
dang...and I thought this was for a professional video editing job or something...

you're dedicated man...all that to help a friend out...

cool that it's working though....
 
You may laugh at my idea but i've seen this work. Put the Hard Disk into a tray thing that sits where CD-RW's etc are can't remember what it's called. When you go into windows sometimes if the Hard Disk isn't broken because of the mechanical sh*t in it, then i've done this to view all the files and back up before throwing it in the bin :p. It just depends what is actualy wrong with your HDD, please no flames at this noobie reply!!!

Macca.
 
umm...am I understanding you correctly in thinking that you just said to take the hdd platter out of the hdd and stick it in your cdrom???? :confused:
 
While spinrite is no cure all like steve gibson claims, it actually has got some bad drives I've had working enough to get data off.... not dead drives mind but ones on serious failure mode. Spinrite isnt as relative in this day and age, most mfg'ers supply check utils. But it once did what norton and others couldnt. IMHO Steve and John Navas have agendas whicn no one is privy too.
 
Thats the way I read it but that won't work because cd-rom's use lasers to read data off of cd's and hard drvies use magnetism.

As we all know nobody knows what they are talking about when it comes to technology and are only lying for public realtions reasons according websites that contradict each other.
 
Elledan said:
If this data is truly important (i.e., people will lose their job/lose large sums of money if it's (partially) lost), you do not want to play around with data recovery programs, as not only might they potentially make the damage worse, every second this drive is powered may bring it closer to total self-destruction. Send it immediately to an expert.

Otherwise you can use the aforementioned programs, but at your own risk.

You didn't make backups of important data?
Click to expand...

Absolutely -- send it to the experts. We once paid a WHOPPING $5,000 to recover data. But it was worth it because the data would have easily cost $10,000 to replace.
 
nst6563 said:
umm...am I understanding you correctly in thinking that you just said to take the hdd platter out of the hdd and stick it in your cdrom???? :confused:
Click to expand...
No you use a special removable tray that you can put a hard drive into , it sits in like a cd-rom and you can view files like a removable disk.
 
a drive carrier or sled, rack, HDD Cooler
all that is doing is adding an extra bridge
Drive to backplane to cable to IDE channel

when you did it though, you likely switched IDE channel and cables
thus that is why it probably worked, not the carrier
or possibly the jumper was altered, a different power lead employed


cheap backplanes (read ATA backplanes) actually cause far more problems then they ever solve
you should have seen my RAID error logs when I was using those

refer to Corruption 101
specifically >
ATA not so Frequently Asked Questions
Or: Why Ribbon Cables are unsuitable for RF transmission of data

The following article was written by snn47 to address some of the issues associated with standard ribbon cables and the use of e.g. removable drive racks as an attempt to share some insight into factors that can adversely affect the life or reliability of of desktop Hard Disk Drives. Specifically, issues like why some drives are working in some systems and not in others, the impact of cable routing and why is it that the drive manufacturers always recommend using their own cables (if supplied with the drive).
Click to expand...
 
Once again, might I remind you that this is NOT MY DRIVE, and whenever I work with valuable data myself, I always back up. My friend was not so fortunate... Remarkable that he knows how to use vid editing but not to back up. :confused:
Ice Czar, when you mean Ribbon Cables does this include round IDE cables?
Cos now I'm starting to get worried for my own computer...
Again, thanks for the help!
 
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