Hardrive problem

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Amplifier

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My secondry hardrive recently started to freeze every minute or so for a few seconds and now my computer does not even seem to detect it.Can this be fixed as there is stuff that I need on the hardrive and I am in desperate need of more space:(....
 
What make and size of hdd?
Is is making any noises, excessive heat?
 
Seems like it might be dying, if your PC can't even recognise it that is a very bad sign.

If you're serious about recovering the data you will stop using it and send it to a professional data recovery company.

These guys can give you a free quote http://www.datarecovery.co.za/, have never used them but they show up first on a google search, which is how I found them.
 
I use a program called GetDataBack - works wonders for faulty drives at recovering data.
But id the drive is making clicking noises then RIP
 
If there's no noises involved, it could be a faulty sata port on the mobo ...... that happened to me 2 weeks back, I replaced the mobo and the hdd's are fine.
 
Before you go sending it away to data recovery companies. Put it into a external USB casing (if you have one). If it detects (even it it's not accessible). And if you are running Windows run Chkdsk. Start / Run: chkdsk d:(external drive location)/r.

It will run for a few hours.
 
What disk is it? Does it spin? If you're in Sandton you can bring it to me to check for you....
 
You might try putting it in an enclosure or another PC, imo though the more you mess around with it the worse it could get. So if there is very valuable data that you need a recovery company is probably the way to go, you don't want to end up destroying it completely.

That said it probably won't be cheap, so if it's just downloaded movies or something I wouldn't bother with paying for recovery, it might cost you more than just redownloading everything (but I have no idea what they may charge).
 
Amplifier said:
computer does not even seem to detect it.
Click to expand...
If the BIOS doesn't detect it then its pretty much game over.:o No amount of software will help if the BIOS doesn't list it.

Maybe try the freezer trick. Might revive it again for a few hours (max).

And investigate what Mephisto said first.
 
IMO the freezer trick is going to cause more harm than good (I know some people say it does work for them but come on it's silly). I read an article about those myths to get HDDs working, will try find it.

Didn't read through it now but sure this is it, http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/245/.
 
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You can download seagates Seatools for free too
This will boot off a cd into there little app and allow you to run short/long tests on the drives, it can try to repair bad sectors too, but if the drive is physically failing get your data off it as fast as possible as its very likely to not last very long.
 
Think about condensation, cold inside the drive and when it heats up moisture forms, absolute total and complete last measure, I wouldn'r expect my drive to work very long at all if trying that, you'd be lucky to get a bit of data off it if any.

Pro companies will do a much better job than chucking it in the freezer.

Bad sectors is not this guys prob IMO, and the time to run the tests is just going to put more strain on the drive, if it is about to fail, possibly rendering it useless.
 
So a colleague brought an USB HDD to me. Can't read anything on that HDD at all. It just freezes the PC.

First thing I did was to make a backup image of the HDD with dd_rescue, which took the whole night. Then I removed the 2.5" HDD from the enclosure, and replaced it with a new HDD, and restored the backup image made with dd_rescue to the new HDD.

When plugged into a Windows PC, nothing could be seen, it was like a blank new HDD. So I downloaded a free NTFS undelete program (search the forum for free undelete tools to find them) and found a whole lot of deleted files.

Currently the undelete process is still running, but I expect it to be finished before 17:00.

Because of the delicate nature of deleted files, I'm restoring the files to an alternative location, to prevent the overwriting of good data.

(dd_rescue only runs on Linux, I'm not aware of any Windows versions which will do the same job).
 
Those data recovery okes are such a rip off and its not a garuantee they will get your data back, friend was charged R5k for data recovery and they screwed the drive as they dis-assembled it to take the platters out, and they scrathed it by mistake and ruined all data, no refund, super awesome
 
Techrat said:
Think about condensation, cold inside the drive and when it heats up moisture forms
Click to expand...
Not really. Thats why you put it in a plastic bad & remove the air from it to shield the circuit board. Drives are sealed nowadays under low moisture conditions so no moisture inside irrespective of what you do temp wise.

Data recovery is about R3000+. Definitely worth it for important data. Result vary greatly though. Used that once. Got about half the data back & half of that was corrupted. So 25% recovery in that case.:o

Thats with a drive that can occasionally still be detected by the BIOS. If the drive is physically damaged then they need to do a platter recovery in clean environment. Think R25k range.

Impressed by the website though.:)

@TheLib: You can salvage a more data from the raw dumps than just with undelete style apps. Esp office documents. They have a unique marker at the start of the file and at the end. Last time round I wrote some custom code to extract them from the images for a client that needed most about office docs and jpgs.

Basically you save all the data between the markers to a file and see what office can open. Thought it was a long shot & nearly fell off my chair when it worked.:D Formatting and inserted objects was hit & miss though.
 
AnomalyNexus said:
@TheLib: You can salvage a more data from the raw dumps than just with undelete style apps. Esp office documents. They have a unique marker at the start of the file and at the end. Last time round I wrote some custom code to extract them from the images for a client that needed most about office docs and jpgs.
Click to expand...

Cool, good to know.

Said colleague is happy all her kiddie photos have been recovered. Next time she might not be lucky... :erm:
 
AnomalyNexus said:
@TheLib: You can salvage a more data from the raw dumps than just with undelete style apps. Esp office documents. They have a unique marker at the start of the file and at the end. Last time round I wrote some custom code to extract them from the images for a client that needed most about office docs and jpgs.
Click to expand...

Is there no utility out there that can add the correct extension to a raw file by looking at internal metadata?

I'm sitting with a 500GB XFS formatted drive that I need to get the data off. Getting the raw files is a breeze (I think) but I need to have them automatically renamed with the correct extension.
 
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ponder said:
Is there no utility out there that can add the correct extension to a raw file by looking at internal metadata?

I'm sitting with a 500GB XFS formatted drive that I need to get the data off. Getting the raw files is a breeze (I think) but I need to have them automatically renamed with the correct extension.
Click to expand...

Ontrack Easyrecovery pro does that. I use it all the time and it really is cool....
 
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