My HDD is borked :(

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vicv

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Ok so last night my PC started acting screwy. I realised that trying to access files on one of my hard drives got a bit difficult. I went through my normal panic and troubleshoot routine and figured out that the HDD smart status is done for.

At the moment I get a lot of read errors.

My question is would it be possible to get the data off the hard drive? (Without the data being corrupt)

Or should I just throw it in the trash and cry knowing that I lost 6 years of data without a sufficient backup?
 
Image drive to file with gnu ddrescue (remember to use a log file!!!), once completed mount image file and see what you can recover from it using various tools.
 
Try SpinRite, I've used it successfully many times. It's debatable whether you should make a backup first, sometimes the HDD is on the brink and any more usage pretty much kills it. Spinrite usually warns you if it thinks it'll destroy the drive :)

Also, for future look at Carbonite for backing up, it's only $60 / year for unlimited backup size with unlimited versions.
 
Had a scare with a HDD a while back too. Went through all the panic actions even booking a Data Recovery Agent.

Ended up being the SATA cable - check and refit the cables, pull them out and plug them back in (of course with the PC switched off ;) ). The little vibrations of the fans could make a slightly suspect SATA cable go loose just enough to cause issues.
I never moved my PC but it still happened.

Try that before going completely nuts. :)
 
shinji said:
Had a scare with a HDD a while back too. Went through all the panic actions even booking a Data Recovery Agent.

Ended up being the SATA cable - check and refit the cables, pull them out and plug them back in (of course with the PC switched off ;) ). The little vibrations of the fans could make a slightly suspect SATA cable go loose just enough to cause issues.
I never moved my PC but it still happened.

Try that before going completely nuts. :)
Click to expand...

What shinji says is completely right. Sometimes the simplest thing is the answer (and I hope for your sake that it's this simple.)
 
If its not the SATA cable and after doing an image you still have some data that you cant recover give Unstopable copy a try on the borked drive. You might get a little lucky.

I've had SATA cables cause issues once or twice before.
 
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This one of my worst fears, fears, i have +- 12tb of content which has been collected over many many years, there is no real backup option if you are poor like myself.
 
I had a screwed up hdd last month. managed to get it to read by shaking it while its spinning lol
 
This thread reminds me I need to backup my external. I need to think of a way to do this. I don't mind losing my movies and music. I can always replace that.
 
Thanks for the suggestions

ponder said:
Image drive to file with gnu ddrescue (remember to use a log file!!!), once completed mount image file and see what you can recover from it using various tools.
Click to expand...

Excuse my noobness but how do I use ddrescue? I see the download is a .tar.lz file?
 
vicv said:
Thanks for the suggestions



Excuse my noobness but how do I use ddrescue? I see the download is a .tar.lz file?
Click to expand...

You could use a clonezilla live cd.... but it might be a little confusing at first. Make sure you read each option twice
 
wez1007 said:
You could use a clonezilla live cd.... but it might be a little confusing at first. Make sure you read each option twice
Click to expand...
+1. I used a single usb drive at first but then I discovered I needed a second drive for the image. Took me quite a while to figure that out.
 
vicv said:
Excuse my noobness but how do I use ddrescue? I see the download is a .tar.lz file?
Click to expand...

You will have to boot from a linux livecd/usb, the clonezilla one contains ddrescue.

You will need a destination drive with a file system that supports files larger than 4GB (So if you are a windows type person that means NTFS) and it would need more free space than the size of the failing partition you are trying to recover from.
Make VERY sure you correctly identify your source partition, else you are gonna write over the wrong thing.
Make VERY sure you have a log file specified so if the power goes out or you have to reboot etc your progress is saved.

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery#Imaging_a_damaged_device.2C_filesystem_or_drive

If you have questions feel free to ask here or PM me. Where you located, maybe I can be of more direct assistance?
 
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ponder said:
You will have to boot from a linux livecd/usb, the clonezilla one contains ddrescue.

You will need a destination drive with a file system that supports files larger than 4GB (So if you are a windows type person that means NTFS) and it would need more free space than the size of the failing partition you are trying to recover from.
Make VERY sure you correctly identify your source partition, else you are gonna write over the wrong thing.
Make VERY sure you have a log file specified so if the power goes out or you have to reboot etc your progress is saved.

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery#Imaging_a_damaged_device.2C_filesystem_or_drive

If you have questions feel free to ask here or PM me. Where you located, maybe I can be of more direct assistance?
Click to expand...

This is a nice guy!

I got afraid just by reading this thread. I will surely drop you a pm in the future.
 
ponder said:
You will have to boot from a linux livecd/usb, the clonezilla one contains ddrescue.

You will need a destination drive with a file system that supports files larger than 4GB (So if you are a windows type person that means NTFS) and it would need more free space than the size of the failing partition you are trying to recover from.
Make VERY sure you correctly identify your source partition, else you are gonna write over the wrong thing.
Make VERY sure you have a log file specified so if the power goes out or you have to reboot etc your progress is saved.

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery#Imaging_a_damaged_device.2C_filesystem_or_drive

If you have questions feel free to ask here or PM me. Where you located, maybe I can be of more direct assistance?
Click to expand...

Thanks for your willingness to help :)

Lucky for me I have managed to successfully recover about 99% of the data by copying the files over to another drive. Only one file, which i don't find of importance, was unable to copy. It was interestingly this file that I was accessing when the borky symptoms started.
 
Post the drives SMART details, it might be fine for all we know.
 
ponder said:
Post the drives SMART details, it might be fine for all we know.
Click to expand...

VlelUea.png


d1lYUA1l.png
 
There is a low value of "relocated sectors count" against high value of "hardware ECC recovered" (approaching tripping level). It indicates that firmware has internal problems of relocating weak sectors. It looks like a typical problem for this firmware version (CC38), similiar to the previous Barracuda 7200.11 series.
This situation was developing for sometimes, only recently demonstrated in drastic way. If you scan entire surface for delays every few months, you could predict it to happen.

Now we have current pending sectors which might be fixed by zero-fill entire surface. Rewrite entire surface, then post SMART report to see it these pending sectors were cleared. If cleared, then scan for delays to see whether there are more issues.


EDIT: There is firmware update to CC49 for this hard drive, but before updating do what I wrote above. It is better to update after current firmware is stabilized. When you update in current condition, you can lose drive forever. http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/213891en
 
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