Can i recover files off a broken hard drive??

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jbard

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#77311 14-Feb-2011 21:04

So a friend gave me a hard drive to try and recover some of the information off.
Its an IDE 2.5" laptop hard drive and seen as i don't have a laptop with one of the connectors i bought a USB cable to plug it into my computer - one like this: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=352796684

Anyway i plugged it in and windows installed the drivers for it then i get this when looking at it in my computer - you can see Local Disk (G) and (H) show up but i can't get any information about them.

Also notice the green loading bar at the top is still trying to load but it just stays like this and doesn'y load past this point.

I can't open the drives and if i right click to select properties explorer just crashes.

So does anyone know of a program i can run to try and grab at least some of the files off this drive or is it just one for the bin?

Cheers

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#439483 14-Feb-2011 21:35

It's probably toast.

Can you open a command prompt and run a CHKDSK on that frive (chkdsk g: /f)?

It probably won't work, but give it a go. There are various file recovery programs out there, or you could try the CHKDSK thing from recovery console.

Failing that, there are data recovery places around that will likely get data off it (for a price!)

richms

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#439488 14-Feb-2011 21:41

USB bridges seem to get hopelessly confused when dealing with a drive that has timeouts etc because its pretty broken.

It could be file system related instead, have you used anything to look at the smart parameters - again a problem thru most USB bridges.

How valuable is the data - is it the only copy of something because your friend has only just realized that it is important and not had backups, or is it just wanting to be recovered to save having to shuffle several 100 DVD's thru a computer getting it all back?

Richard rich.ms

rscole86

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#439514 14-Feb-2011 21:59

If you have nothing to lose... try the freezer trick.

jbard

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#439522 14-Feb-2011 22:10

so chkdsk is out: just says can't access this volume directly.

I didn't think the USB bridge would be helping but wasn't sure what other options i had.

Just spoke with the guy and their is no back up of this information(surprise, surprise) and it is quite important to him. So if i can't get anything off it he would be prepared to pay for a recovery specialist to get the data off.

I ran GSmartControl on the drive but it never completes the scan - i guess this is due to the USB.

Never heard of the freezer trick, but i'm sure i can google it - if i give it ago is it likely to completely finish off the drive?

richms

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#439525 14-Feb-2011 22:13

Send it to the speclist now then if they are happy to pay, the more it is powered on and dodgey, the less likly recovery is possible.

Dont screw around with the freezer etc.

Richard rich.ms

jbard

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#439527 14-Feb-2011 22:17

richms: Send it to the speclist now then if they are happy to pay, the more it is powered on and dodgey, the less likly recovery is possible.

Dont screw around with the freezer etc.

Yeah that sounds like the sensible idea.

Does anyone know of a good company in New Zealand - i see quite a few on google, but has anyone used any of these before?

And does anyone have a ball park figure and what my friend is going to have to pay?

Cheers

richms

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#439530 14-Feb-2011 22:19

When I was contemplating it from a dead OS drive with some stuff I needed, the student rate from one of them was a $6 or 700 starting price. As it was just a firefox profile and about 6 hours of work that was not backed up that I needed, I decided it was not worth it.

Richard rich.ms

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CYaBro

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#439536 14-Feb-2011 22:27

NEVER try and run chkdsk on a drive that you suspect/know is failing!
I would try and take a full image of it first or try run some recovery software and see if it can get anything off it.
We use GetDataBack. You can download it and run it for free but you need to buy it to actually restore anything it finds.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

gzt

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#439728 15-Feb-2011 12:14

I used a data recovery service a few years ago to deal with a drive with a seized spindle. Bearing failure I think. They did a temporary repair to allow me to transfer the data to another drive. I think the charge for that was $350 or so. Good service.

In addition to the freezer technique for bearing failure, there is also manual spin up.

There are lots of failures unrelated to spindle failure though. The do-it-yourself data recovery for these other problems is getting an identical firmware revision drive and putting the platter into the known good one, then recovering the data to something safe.

gzt

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#439734 15-Feb-2011 12:20

I have read that many USB to SATA converters do not implement the entire ATA command set, and many may implement some of it incorrectly. I would be wary about using recovery utilities over one of these interfaces.

Create a disk image before you change anything.

Lias

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#439840 15-Feb-2011 15:05

As someone else has already said, if the person is prepared to pay for professional data reocvery, power it off and ship it. The longer you have it powered on, and the more stuff you try to do to it, the greater risk of no data recovery or increased recovery costs.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

Lias

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#439841 15-Feb-2011 15:06

Oh and www.datalab.co.nz do good work. Had a recovery done by them a year or two ago, cost a grand, which was substantially less than the other quotes I got.

gzt

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#439849 15-Feb-2011 15:20

I think the service I used (some time ago) was computer forensics nz.

jbard

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#439851 15-Feb-2011 15:22

Thanks for all your help guys :)

I am going to talk to my friend in the next few days although $1000+ may be a bit steep for him. Saying that i have no idea what is on the hard drive so it might be worth it for him.

richms

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#439885 15-Feb-2011 16:32

Well, now your friend will tell all his friends and hopefully people start to treat their data with respect.

Richard rich.ms

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