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semi broken HDD, help getting some files off it. (data transfer software?)

S

SpiderWaffle

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 4, 2007
Messages
243
I have a WD black caviar 1TB that never seemed to work very well from day 1. tried reformatting it before in the past, just tried switching SATA cables, and SATA ports, still acts the same. It writes "okay" but is just horrendous with access times and reading. like under 1MB/s usually.

So there's a few files I want to get off of it before using the 5 year limited warranty. I was able to copy a few of them off, took about 5 minutes for some 100MB files, but most it will say like 23 hours for files sizing ranging from 50-600MB, after about 2-30 minutes it will tell me the data transfer failed.

I know there some programs that help transfer data better than windows does, have options to ignore checks and errors and such, yes the data might not be great afterwards but better than nothing. I think that would be perfect cases like this and used it successfully in the past on dying HDDs.

I just can't remember the name of the software and couldn't find good results for free ones online.
 
You didn't exactly mention this, but have you checked the SMART information for that HDD?
Are any of the SMART reported codes showing as 'FAIL'?
If you don't know how to check the SMART information on your HDD, you can download HD TUNE trial and it will show you the SMART information for your drive. Additionally, HD TUNE will let you benchmark your drive's performance, but you should not bother running any benchmarks on your drive if the SMART information shows the drive is failing.

Assuming your drive is formatted for FAT32 or NTFS (and not EXFAT).

Linux + DD command with correct parameters = your friend.

For a simpler non-command line solution, I have had great success in getting data off failing drives and/or failing HDD controllers using UBCD4WIN which will require a Windows XP SP1+ installation disk or working installation on a HDD to build out the bootable ISO file that you can burn to a CD and use to boot the computer with the failing drive. The UBCD4WIN disc has multiple backup / restore software options one of which should have a good chance of working for you.

Other options would be TeraCopy (potentially) or any number of Windows programs that attempt data recovery for HDD bad disk sectors.

Well good luck getting your data back.
edit: to add 'XP' as the version of windows required by UBCD4WIN program
 
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oh ya I forgot to mention, windows disc check always reported "no errors" "no bad sectors" "drive working properly"

and the only error I get when running HDD scan SMART is
"197 Current Pending Errors Count 192 192 0000000000-05AF 000 "

MB is a gigabyte EP45-UD so shouldn't be any compatibility lack of 3.0 firmware update thing. Drive is sadly likely just messed up in some tiny but crucial inane, annoying way. (I blame newegg POS shipping)

Teracopy I think is what I used before loved it, seems to be non-free non-freemium now though :( I'll try torrent search :p
 
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Unfortunately about half the files couldn't be transferred with Teracopy either. Just stalls out with no errors reported.

Are there any other ideas for Windows 7 64 bit? It's a slave drive, can transfer to another windows 7 machine also. About 7 100-600MB media files would be nice to get back.
 
Do you happen to have a 2nd 1 TB drive that is blank (or can be offloaded so it is blank)?
If you do have this, why not grab a copy of Clonezilla.
1) Download the correct ISO for your system (UEFI = AMD64 Ubuntu based version, and older bios can use any version)
2) Burn the image to a CD.
3) Turn off your computer (and unplug from wall after powering down)
4) Unplug all devices and plug in only your WD 1 TB Black drive and your other blank 1TB drive.
5) Plug the computer back in and power it on.
6) Put the Clonezilla CD in your CD Rom and setup in the BIOS that it boot from the cd-rom (assuming the system doesn't try to do this by default anyway).
7) Follow the Clonezilla instructions for Cloning the drive using the DD method when the parameter is selectable. (if you have questions about it, you should be able to find more detailed information on the Clonezilla.org site.

This will basically make all possible efforts to pull the data off your old drive and copy it bit for bit to the new drive. If the WD 1 TB Black drive can be read from, it will accomplish it. Given the copy speed you mentioned in your original post, you should expect this will take quite a few hours to complete once you get it going, so make sure you don't need your system for anything else for a day or so.

Edit: I want to stress to you that the drive you are copying data to needs to be blank, because anything on it if you use the procedure above will be gone and replaced with whatever contents are currently on the WD 1 TB Black drive.
 
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