Hard Disk Recovery

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bp1000

31 posts

Geek

#85056 12-Jun-2011 21:00

I am trying to recover data from a faulty Toshiba 2.5 SATA drive in a Sony laptop. I have tried using Acronis True Image Home (Rescue CD) to image to an external drive, but while Acronis sees the drive and it's partitions, after starting the image backup it just hangs (I've left it for days without change). I've tried Spinrite to "fix" the drive, but it just hangs as well. I've tried Paragon Rescue Kit, but it doesn't even see the drive. I've taken the drive out of the laptop and put it in an external case on another machine, but cannot recover any data via any means I have tried so far.

Does anyone have any other tool recommendations for data recovery? I don't think my customer is going to pay for specialist data recovery, so I'm looking for any other options.

The drive powers up, there is no click of death noise, BIOS sees it, but my usual tools don't work. I've had good results getting data back from faulty drives using Acronis. I'm starting to hate Toshiba drives due to the lack of any diagnostic tools from Toshiba. I ran the Seagate tool and it reported back that the drive was faulty.

I'm currently at a dead end, so would appreciate any assistance.

Regards,
Brendan

PeterReader

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lurker

718 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#480439 12-Jun-2011 21:36

Try mounting the drive in a Linux distro?

dontpanic42

1574 posts

Uber Geek

#480587 13-Jun-2011 12:12

I haven't actually used this software myself, but I saw a post from another fellow geekzoner that was singing it's praises.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Original post: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/sleemanj/7672

Might be worth a look.

CADMAX

274 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#480750 13-Jun-2011 21:19

I had this happen last year, a mate told be to stick it in a static bag and put it in the freezer and do the recovery from there worked well.

by the way i tried all types of software but non worked :P

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

gzt

11644 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#480811 13-Jun-2011 23:29

If it is not a spindle lock,

Ghost (corporate product) might be useful.

Additional commandline options you could need:

- IR: The Image Raw switch copies the entire disk, ignoring the partition table. This is useful when a disk does not contain a partition table in the standard PC format, or you do not want partitions to be realigned to track boundaries on the destination disk. Some operating systems may not be able to access unaligned partitions. Partitions cannot be resized during restore and you need an identical or larger disk.

- FRO: Forces Ghost to continue cloning even if the source contains bad clusters. Example: "Ghost.exe -IR -FRO"

The later version you can obtain the better.

From memory, Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 (latest release) has some enhancements to the Ghost Explorer image reader which vastly improve your chances of getting useful data out of the image you create.

Run Live Update before you start Ghost Boot Wizard to create the Ghost boot package containing the boot environment and the commandline options you need.

[EDIT: Just remembered Ghost Explorer does not display the contents of IA/IR images - so try that switch last.]

[EDIT: Also, you could try just a standard create first - it should be fairly robust anyway, and you might get lucky]

CYaBro

3330 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#480818 14-Jun-2011 00:08

I've had great success with getdataback.
They have a free trial which will tell you if data is recoverable or not.

bp1000

31 posts

Geek

#480870 14-Jun-2011 09:21

Thanks everyone for your replies so far. The drive has further degraded now, and does not show up in BIOS or any of the tools I've used as an available drive. It still spins up, but sounds like the armature is not seeking properly.

I will look at the various tools suggested, and the excellent freezer option. I tried that with the drive last night, but it is now too far gone.

Regards, Brendan

trig42

5038 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#480878 14-Jun-2011 09:38

Is it really important? Like you would be willing to pay important?

There are data recovery firms out there that will help you. I have used them in the past for clients who have neglected backups, and I have never had them not be able to get the data they really needed. It is a destructive process (you won't get your drive back) and you usually need to provide a good working drive at the same time for your data to be saved to, but it works.

I use these guys, they are good: http://www.dtidata.co.nz/

It is not cheap, but if the data is irreplaceable....

josephhinvest

www.hinve.st
1337 posts

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Trusted

Subscriber

#480933 14-Jun-2011 10:56

If the failure is mechanical, I would probably suggest not doing anything more with the drive, and send if for forensic recovery. It depends what your data is worth, of course.
Computer Forensics in Hamilton have a pretty good reputation (used several times at prior employer with success) but be prepared for a quote of $500 to $1500.

Cheers,
Joseph

Edit... Sorry, just re-read and see your customer is unlikely to want to pay for recovery.
If it's a mechanical fault there's probably nothing more you can do via software I would think.