Windows Defragmentation utility made my disk unuseable.

[Erau]

Model: IBM DDYS-T18350 (18GB SCSI Ultrastar 36LZX)
OS: WXP Pro

Maybe you have heard this story before, but I really need some help. My OS drive crashed and there is some highly important data that needs to come off there.

I ran the defrag utility, the comp froze so I hard booted with the restart button and now it will not boot; "Start Unit Request Failed" is the error message. Installed fresh OS on another drive and booted off that to access the bad disk, can't access it. Ran IBM Disk FItness Utility (DFT) "Defective Device. Device not ready."

Physically touching the drive, I can feel that it's spinning up and down when the system is powered on and off.

Is there anything I can do other than the drop it/freeze it/bake it solution? I did try banging it on different sides with the soft part of my palm, it was a good hit, enough to make a person dizzy for a minute if it was their head, if that gives you an idea. And I dropped it from about 3 inches. No result. I'm concerned that once I get deeper into the extreme methods that there will be no turning back and whether it would make the situation worse by eliminating any other possible solution. I sure don't have $10,000 to give to a data recovery service and really need to access this data.

 

[Paragon]

I did try banging it on different sides with the soft part of my palm, it was a good hit, enough to make a person dizzy for a minute if it was their head, if that gives you an idea. And I dropped it from about 3 inches. No result.

Are you serious? Are you trying to kill it more or what? Never heard of banging a hard drive around to make it work. Hitting a drive will only make matters worse, especially if it is powered.

Chances are that the arm servos aren't working. Do you hear them undocking/docking with power on? If not, then you probably aren't going to get anything off it since you need the heads. Normal drives spin up and when they are at speed, the arms/heads will release from the docked position and start reading, etc.

<> Swapping boards might be the only way to save it.

 

[Snugglebear]

Start unit request failed is a fatal error and not something you're going to fix on your own. Whether the electronics are shot or there's a mechanical error deep inside, I don't know. Many years ago I had this exact problem and neither I or tech support could do anything. However, since I had/have backups, the only real issue was making sure IBM was going to wipe the disk because there was some information from patient medical records on there.

And yes, defragging is the absolute last thing you'd want to do in any situation with a nauseated drive.

 

[Erau]

I read about hitting/banging it from IT techs, based on the idea of dropping it.

~~

So what would you suggest I should try next? Baking it or freezing it. I just need a few minutes to get the data off.

~~

How did you ensure that IBM wiped the drive?

 

[agent420]

Sorry, can't help much here, but I did want to comment on a couple of things...

I doubt Windows Defrag killed your drive. Most likely the drive failed for other reasons of it's own and it was coincidence that if failed while running Defrag.

I'm not clear from your post if the drive crashed 1st and then you tried to run defrag in an attempt to salvage your data, but if that's the case it would be the worst thing you could do. Any time you're working with a problem drive, the last thing you want to do is write to it - you're just wiping data as you do that.

I'm no data reclamation pro, but in all my years I've never heard of hitting or dropping a drive as a method of salvaging data. I sure as hell would have asked around about the validity of that before I went ahead and smacked my drive. Sounds like the Nigirian bank scam to me.

Finally, any data that crucial should have a backup. Storage is so cheap these days there's no reason not to have regular backups. Unfortunately, this is the way most people learn that lesson.

Again, my condolences.

 

[Ice Czar]

I doubt Windows Defrag killed your drive. Most likely the drive failed for other reasons of it's own and it was coincidence that if failed while running Defrag.

making extensive changes to the Master File Table when a drive is having problems is begging for some serious trouble, I agree it wasnt the root cause, but is likely a huge contributing factor, defragging under those circumstances is like asking a hospital patient to run a marathon, its giving all the components and filesystem a serious workout, and so has a higher percentage chance of giving out just then

smacking a HDD is a valid recovery technique
as a measure of last resort
and then only if you are extremely confident that its seized
and where unable to get it to work with the freezer trick
and if its a seized HDD there would have likely been an endless clicking cycle before it seized
and you wouldnt have felt it spinning
a sudden silent failure points to the circuit board, especially if its powered up and spinning

its something you go to great lengths to avoid in all other cases,
and you assume that even if it does give you a window to rescue the data
serious head slap has occured and the drive will never be the same

if its the cicuit board you can possibly switch them out, to attempt recovery,
provided that it wasnt killed by smackin it

if the arm\head is unable to calibrate to the servo bursts because it misaligned do to the smacking, it really wont matter if the circuit board is functional again
also, you need to match up circuit boards and firmware versions, something often easier said than done
members have had luck and factory assistance from Maxtor, and the above example is a Seagate, but at least one member was told it was impossible by Western Digital Tech Support (or at least a tech there, and gave him no assistance in how to go about locating a compatible board)

With an IBM drive your really in a world of hurt, since they dont make them anymore, Hitachi might help, maybe

 

[agent420]

smacking a HDD is a valid recovery technique
as a measure of last resort
and then only if you are extremely confident that its seized

I learn something new every day

making extensive changes to the Master File Table when a drive is having problems is begging for some serious trouble, I agree it wasnt the root cause, but is likely a huge contributing factor

Concur, but I guess my point was that the failure was not due to any bug or fault with the defrag utility itself, so much as it was just a stressful operation on the drive. Any other stress condition could have been the breaking point as well.

 

[Ice Czar]

definately agree, the "program" wasnt at fault, but there are few access patterns as demanding as a defrag would be on a heavily fragmented volume

some people actually mistakenly avoid defraging
thinking that its unecessary "wear" on the drive
when of course overall its reduces the "wear" when spread over a longer period

for those lurking, the "wear" here being moving the armeture around, the spindle motor and platter always spins at the same rate, and the read write head doesnt contact the platter surface (until it is "parked" in a landing zone for some HDDs others raise it),
or at least its not supposed to
if it does its called headslap and its a very bad thing

Head Slap from the Seagate Proper Handling Guide
Head slap is when the actuator arm/read-write assembly impacts the platter due to a shock such as a tip-over, a tap with a screwdriver, or an overly aggressive shove to get the drive into a bay. This can also occur if you try to scoot the box across your desk while it is running.

As a result of the impact, tiny indentations can be formed.
The material ejected from this impact is scattered about the disc,
and when the drive is powered up the heads will pass over this indentation and the ejected material.
This can be the equivalent of running over a bowling ball in a go-cart traveling at Mach 813.

I just love that qoute

 

[HitmanZ]

I sure don't have $10,000 to give to a data recovery service and really need to access this data.

You don't have to, their are several good restoring/data recovery software out there that you can use, sometimes for free, other times for around 50+. But i'm sure they have free limited trials. Go ahead and use those as a last resort. I'm sure freezing won't work because your drive isn't seized. Also banging on the hard drive was a good idea, although i'm not really sure if this is a 100% hardware problem, since this happened after defrag, but then again, the electronics on the hd could have failed, thus resorting into a frozen defrag utitlity/windows.

 

[Ice Czar]

think the point was that without the ability to have the drive recognized by the BIOS and accessed by a recovery ap
your reduced to cracking the drive in a recovery lab and reading the data from the platters directly

which is extremely expensive
they would first try to restore access by replacing the circuit board inorder to avoid that
if we can restore basic uncorrupted access its likely the data will be recoverable with basic aps

Id recommend File Scavenger for a good direct sector scanner

 

[Erau]

Well, in a perfect world everything is backed up but last I checked the world is not perfect so I think naturally and inevitably things go wrong and its' good to always develop ways of recovery. I'm not against backing up, of course. Just not sure if one should expect by default that every system is backed up all the time.

If you're interested this is my guess as to what may have had to do with the drive dying:

The drive was working fine before running Windows Defrag. The only difference vs. optimal functioining was that it was slow. This slowness became more noticeable when Acrobat Distiller decided to run as a result of a delay in carrying out mouse functions, apparently I had clicked on start menu and Distiller without seeing it on the desktop because the desktop had froze. The clicks were stored and carried out when the desktop came back. This is my guess. Upon launching, Distiller automatically started collecting all the Windows fonts to itself, this was over 2,000 fonts. This went very slow, the HD activity light wouldn't turn off, and no indication of progress for Distiller. The desktop would update extremely slowly (minutes). This went on for 10 minutes or so. The HD activity light didn't even flicker at this point, just steady on. The idea was instead of shutting Distiller down I let it do what it wanted to do but at that point I hard rebooted. Disc still working fine except more slow. That's when I ran defrag, analysis showed 33% fragmentation. The drive had never been defragged before.

Then the HD died.

~~

I didn't blindly bag the drive about. I hit it on the side and the top cover (not the circuit board). I doubt my banging did anything to the circuit board. If problem is with board, maybe a result from what happen before (described above). After banging there was also no noticeable change in the drive's operation from physical observation, the drive still spun up on power up and down on shutdown with no difference in operating sounds than before.

I think I have to reserach about finding a replacement circuit board because how can data recovery software work if the drive can't be accessed.

My guess is the other possibility, if not the circuit board, could be the heads are stuck. If there was only a way to release the heads. This was the idea behind hitting the drive. I'm no HD expert but this is just what I'm thinking.

Doesn't seem to me like there's much hope from reading this thread. Any other ideas sure would be appreciated.

 

[Snugglebear]

I didn't blindly bag the drive about. I hit it on the side and the top cover (not the circuit board). I doubt my banging did anything to the circuit board. If problem is with board, maybe a result from what happen before (described above). After banging there was also no noticeable change in the drive's operation from physical observation, the drive still spun up on power up and down on shutdown with no difference in operating sounds than before.

Banging stuff is a great opportunity for ESD to work its magic, but most likely hitting it just piles on the issues.

 

[Erau]

That's good to know but how about if you're grounded when you bang stuff.

 

[Erau]

No luck yet. No clear plan about swapping circuit boards, I'm leaning towards it's a stuck head problem rather than circuit board. I'm going to try freezing it next. Anybody here ever freeze a drive? Warnings or methodology suggestions? Have to get this data off of here.

 

[Ice Czar]

In the FAQ

 

[Erau]

Thanks, I will follow that.