I had a problem like this before. I looked for WEEKS trying to find a replacement HD Circuit board. Its just not worth it. I cut my losses and bought a new hard drive. If you stayed in US it would be a different story because of eBay and all the easy methods to get items quick and cheap.
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Last edited by eXisor; 13-07-2012 at 08:52 AM.
BRILLIANT THREAD!!!!
Where's the like button ?
Good stuff peepz
Why are external hard drives so fragile? (Ok, maybe in this instance it was at least easier to fix) I've had two external hard drives go click after falling off my desk. They're filled with important things like back-ups... (and family pictures and what not)... They currently live on the shelf (maybe I should throw them from the roof to get the shiny platters?), where I use them as paper-weights :/
It would be nice to get the data off of them.... (Que people telling me reasonable places in Cape Town that do data recovery)
Anyway. GREAT thread. I have indeed learned quite a lot about hard drives.
Originally Posted by DVTeixera
They were not designed to go skydiving.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
Or learn Russian, there is lot of information on Russian Web sites. Unfortunately I am not so fluent with bukvas...
Here is example: http://forum.ru-board.com/topic.cgi?forum=84&topic=1860
More than 200 pages. Couple other as well. Some threads overflowed server and had to be divided for parts: Seagate Part1, 2, 3 and growing...
A lot of current day data recovery products were started by russians. Between the russians & the chinese you will find a lot of resources.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
And because it ia open community, such tools like Acelab PC3K could be developed. Chineese, well, I can say they copied PC3K, but no much original ideas.
Thanks Guys for such an awesome thread. Especially to South_Bit for sharing his knowledge. My external 2TB went flying off a desk in Mauritius 2 weeks ago, thanks to a French tourist. Trying to download recovery software from the Orange network at a staggering 36Kb per second only added to my misery. Green Island rum and coconut kept me sane (and numb) until my return. Getting back to the pros and cons, I tried various "recovery" software to varying degrees of success. As my drive was damaged and Windows 7 wanted to format it but couldn't, I spent a few days looking for "free" recovery software. Needless to say, all the free ones could not even "see" the drive, even when it was hooked up directly to my desktop. Then I started using the 'demo" versions of expensive "professional" software recovery programmes, so here is what I found. R-Studio 6 was the best, it found my drive and you can search the drive in sectors and create images of those sectors. I started at 1 Gig to 100 Gig and only searched for RAR files and jpegs. I always RAR all my Microsoft Docs so they are easier to find and also password protect. I bought myself a USB 3.0 One TB External HD for my recovered files. The 100 Gig search and recover took about 90 minutes, most of the stuff was intact and I managed to get most of my important files back. I soon learned to search in 50 Gig increments, as this took 40 min to scan and recover. The second best Recovery Software was Easeus Data Recovery Wixard 5.5.1 which is excellent as well. I also tried Stellar Phoenix, Recuva, Recover My Files, HDD Regenerator and a host of others which were a waste of time ( for my particular problem) If I had DJ's problem I would have ran R-Studio or Easeus on the Laptop, they would have recovered maybe 90% of what he had lost. Hope this helps.
Big thanx to the guys (especially Southbit). I wont ever forget this trick. I actually learnt something.
Another brilliant software data recovery program is Get Data Back for FAT or Get Data Back for NTFS. Works great for me everytime.
Big thanx to the guys (especially Southbit). I wont ever forget this trick. I actually learnt something.
Another brilliant software data recovery program is Get Data Back for FAT or Get Data Back for NTFS. Works great for me everytime.
I've never tried it so thanks for the heads up. I'm downloading a copy now and will give some feedback on it's capabilities. I've saved 600 Gig so far on the 2 TB Story External Drive using R-Studio 6, as well as Easeus Data Recovery Wizard. Best of the Bunch so far. I will run GDB later this eve and see what it does. South_Bit's input was awesome. With knowledge like that he must be my age!! LOL
Someone asked why hard drives are so fragile. If you think about it...
Disc is spinning at 7,200 rpm. Think of the crankshaft in your car spinning at this speed to get an idea of speed. The part of the head assembly that is close to the surface is absolutely tiny. You can imagine what happens when a highly sophisticated, tiny, fragile component comes into contact with something going along at 7,200rpm. It's actually amazing that they work at all if you think about what goes in on there, and at what speeds/tolerances. They are pretty tough when switched off, just be careful with them when they're on.
With regards to recovery software, R-Studio is something we use every single day. Another good piece of software is ZAR (zero assumption recovery), it beats all the other software suites when it comes to looking for lost data.
Just remember, be careful when running software scans on a damage drive, you could easily kill it all together. The way we (and every other recovery company) do it is:
1) Repair drive - replace/repair any faulty components to get the drive to initialise. Heads, PCB, resolve firmware issues, etc
2) Image the drive - we have hardware devices created specifically for this function. (Google Deepspar disc imager)
3) Run recovery software on the image - so we never run any actual recovery on the original drive.
So just be careful when running anything intensive on a dying drive, rather image it first. A good free, software alternative for end users is dd_rescue. That can also kill your drive though if it's in a bad way. If your data is important rather save up and have it done properly.
Get Data Back for NTFS v 4.25 does not read my "broken external drive" whatsoever. It only "sees" my other hard drives.
R-Studio picked my "broken" 2 TB HD with no effort. ( after about 2 mins) However its a personal choice where you spend your hard earned cash to recover lost files. Just giving my input as I suffered the same problem as DJ. Partition Recovery v 5 repaired my external HD MBR in a matter of minutes, plus it's free. I promise I wont mention the Navy....
South_Bit. You are a legend. I would willingly send you my HD for recovery and save myself a pile of time and effort. I have only imaged my drive with R-Studio but will willingly hand it over to you as a professional. I appreciate your response and efforts. Any indication of costs involved would be nice to know?
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