Recovering files from fried hard drive?

[G-ZUS]

The HD on my pc finally crapped out and I got a bunch of shit on it I need to get off. I tried a IDE-USB adapter, when I plug it in, the pc recognizes it but when I try to open or explore the drive the computer slows down to the point of not responding. Any other way I can recover my files?

[Grogador]

put it in a ziploc bag, leave it in the freezer for a few hours, you should get 20mins out of it... google "freezer trick" if it sounds sketchy ;) all it does is loosen up the bearings/heads and give you a bit of life out of it before it freezes up again. the nice thing is the platters remain untouched so your data is still there, so you could still shell out big bucks for professional recovery.

[Kloubek]

hey Grogador - that's an interesting trick. I guess I can understand how it's supposed to work, and is worth a try.

More often than not though, hard drives crap out due to physical damage and cannot be recovered no matter what temperature they are stored at. :)

[black13]

Originally posted by Grogador
put it in a ziploc bag, leave it in the freezer for a few hours, you should get 20mins out of it... google "freezer trick" if it sounds sketchy ;) all it does is loosen up the bearings/heads and give you a bit of life out of it before it freezes up again. the nice thing is the platters remain untouched so your data is still there, so you could still shell out big bucks for professional recovery.
This has worked for me once before. It's the best way.

[hampstor]

I just paid to have data recovered - i used oneworld data recovery (their centre is in saskatoon). It was quick, relatively inexpensive and they included a brand new hard drive as a replacement as well.

[Grogador]

It's a great trick for "noisy" (click, clank, whirrrr, whiiiine) drives and I even managed to pull some important data from a drive with a flaky controller (the big chip on it got REALLY hot). Normally though it won't help if you fried the controller or knocked some chips off it with a runaway screwdriver :rolleyes: at that point you just swap the controller from an identical drive...


Originally posted by hampstor
I just paid to have data recovered - i used oneworld data recovery (their centre is in saskatoon). It was quick, relatively inexpensive and they included a brand new hard drive as a replacement as well.

How much data for how much $$ if you don't mind me asking?

[Grogador]

Sorry to clutter but you might also want to try skipping the USB adapter, and just slaving it into the machine direct IDE/SATA. The USB adapter might be having trouble talking to a 'reluctant' drive (lots of I/O errors, stalls for a bit...).

[Thaco]

i find that often when the drive is inaccessible through windows, a bootable linux will usually allow it to be written/red from... i use a knoppix boot dvd

[benyl]

So I have a hard drive out of my BIL laptop, but I can't get at the files because of permissions (Vista). How do I overcome this?

The drive has a bunch of bad sectors, but the directory tree pulls up fine.

[NATE0513]

If the drive has a mechanical problem the freezer trick may work but you have a very limited amount of time to pull data off the drive.

If it is physically damaged due to some kind of impact then the likelihood of even a data recovery company being able to pull "whole data" goes down based on the severity of damage.

If it's IDE slave it up to your primary HD or connect it to your secondary IDE channel (if available). If it is SATA just connect it.

control panel > administrative tools > disk management

if it lists in that dialogue you may need to add a drive letter to it. If it lists with a drive letter try and read it from my computer. If it does not show up at all then try the freezer trick.

[NATE0513]

Originally posted by benyl
So I have a hard drive out of my BIL laptop, but I can't get at the files because of permissions (Vista). How do I overcome this?

The drive has a bunch of bad sectors, but the directory tree pulls up fine.

Put it into another computer that you are the administrator on. Grant yourself ownership rights, and turn off inheritance.

[benyl]

Originally posted by NATE0513


Put it into another computer that you are the administrator on. Grant yourself ownership rights, and turn off inheritance.

schuweet.

[hampstor]

Originally posted by Grogador
It's a great trick for "noisy" (click, clank, whirrrr, whiiiine) drives and I even managed to pull some important data from a drive with a flaky controller (the big chip on it got REALLY hot). Normally though it won't help if you fried the controller or knocked some chips off it with a runaway screwdriver :rolleyes: at that point you just swap the controller from an identical drive...



How much data for how much $$ if you don't mind me asking?

All the data on a 160gb drive for less than 700 - the smallest drive they could put the data on was a 250gb so I got a 250gb back.

The drive I had could not be read via a USB adapter or directly attached

[redevil]

Originally posted by hampstor


All the data on a 160gb drive for less than 700 - the smallest drive they could put the data on was a 250gb so I got a 250gb back.

The drive I had could not be read via a USB adapter or directly attached

do you have a website link to the company you used? How long did it take them to get it all back to you?

Was you HD mechanically broken, where they had to take it apart and recover data from the platelets?

[koopkoop2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

http://www.grc.com/default.htm

SpinRite works miracles on toasted hard drives. The guy who wrote it is a computer super genius (Director of Engineering @ age 24).

From the GRC site:
"An 80GB hard drive on one of our busy storage servers decided to pack it in. Prior to trying SpinRite we were still able to access the drive intermittently but it was impossible to copy data or run a file undelete utility. A handful of important files had been written to the drive subsequent to the last backup the previous night; files which we needed within about 48 hours, which meant that a professional data recovery service (with its three week backlog) was out of the question. We removed the drive and installed it in an identical hardware configuration, then booted SpinRite 6 from CD and did a Level 2 recovery (see above for recovery level definitions). After 22 hours, SpinRite completed its work and pronounced the drive fully recovered. We reinstalled the drive in the original server. It ran perfectly, the research assistant who had created the required files copied them off the drive and that was that. Nice job SpinRite 6. The drive was still running fine as we went to publication with this review two weeks after the incident. We used a level 2 setting in SpinRite: Recover Unreadable Data."

[G-ZUS]

I will throw it in the freezer over night then try it again tomorrow ! Its not physically damaged, it just decided to hit the shitter

[G-ZUS]

Had it in the freezer since 2pm yesterday, took it out this morning. Hookedi t up straight IDE didn't work, USB adapter same story. It's not showing up on the USB adapter but it comes up as a drive when I hook it up to IDE. The other 2 drives in the computer have a hand under them but this one doesn't. I can't open it to view files on it. I do hear a whirring sound though.

[SpireTECH]

Lots of hard drive noises are perfectly legitimate, lots of them are not. It's near impossible to decipher a bearing failure or head stack failure from normal operation without hearing the drive in person.

More importantly, if the data is mission critical then I highly recommend finding a professional data recovery service (which we do offer BTW). Improper use of the recovery tools can actually screw things up more. If the hard drive has a mechanical failure, the more often you run it, the worse off you are. Just some things to consider, if you really need that data back.

Someone else mentioned it already, but I don't think you have tried it yet. In you case, a Linux Live CD/USB stick is your best bet at recovering the files. With Linux you have more control over the drive, and can bypass certain fail safes built into the file system. If you're not familiar with Linux, it can be a tricky task to complete on your own, and it can damage the drive further with improper use.

[redevil]

Originally posted by SpireTECH
Lots of hard drive noises are perfectly legitimate, lots of them are not. It's near impossible to decipher a bearing failure or head stack failure from normal operation without hearing the drive in person.

More importantly, if the data is mission critical then I highly recommend finding a professional data recovery service (which we do offer BTW). Improper use of the recovery tools can actually screw things up more. If the hard drive has a mechanical failure, the more often you run it, the worse off you are. Just some things to consider, if you really need that data back.

Someone else mentioned it already, but I don't think you have tried it yet. In you case, a Linux Live CD/USB stick is your best bet at recovering the files. With Linux you have more control over the drive, and can bypass certain fail safes built into the file system. If you're not familiar with Linux, it can be a tricky task to complete on your own, and it can damage the drive further with improper use.


how much do you charge for a HD recovery for something like this? I have an external HD that has 10GB of files I need to recover. It is clicking so it would likely have to be opened up. Do you guys have a clean room or other methods that have a good chance it will be recovered? Please let me know.

Thanks

[Xtrema]

HDs are cheap. So is motherboard with RAID1 options.

Just mirror the drive down the road or have an USB backup drive for crucial data.

$700 for data recovery service could have been prevented with a good RAID set up.

[Grogador]

Originally posted by Xtrema
HDs are cheap. So is motherboard with RAID1 options.

Just mirror the drive down the road or have an USB backup drive for crucial data.

$700 for data recovery service could have been prevented with a good RAID set up.

RAID is a method for mitigating hardware failure, it is not a replacement for (secure, reliable, offsite) backups. Think viruses, fire, theft, user error, etc.

[SpireTECH]

Originally posted by redevil



how much do you charge for a HD recovery for something like this? I have an external HD that has 10GB of files I need to recover. It is clicking so it would likely have to be opened up. Do you guys have a clean room or other methods that have a good chance it will be recovered? Please let me know.

Thanks

An abnormal clicking usually indicates a head stack failure, but not always. If the head stack has failed, then yes, as you have already surmised, the platters will have to be extracted.

For data recovery involving platter extraction we contract out through a Toronto based firm that handles hundreds of these every day. Going through us for this service nets about a 5% discount off of their normal rates. For exact prices I will have to get back to you on the 26th.

In most cases of hard drive failure (~90%), we are able to recover the data using non-invasive methods.

[Proboscis]

FAT32 or NTFS?

[torob]

Just because this is about hard drive failures and SpireTECH is giving information on recovery,
i am interested to know how much it would cost to recover a 500gb pata that i used to run as external

I had it laying on the ground and something urgent happened and as i turned around to leave the room i accidentally kicked it pretty hard.
The head / actuator arm // i don't know // is probably broken and loose in there.
Due to my stupidity i did run it a couple times with no luck of it.

How much would it cost to get this 500gb (not sure how much information on it) recovered? If the platters are usable (Is some of the money refundable if the platters are non-recoverable?)

[420Ninja]

Well its not too hard to pop open a hard drive and check that shit out, just make sure you keep dust and stuff down to absolute zero.

And personally ive nuked countless drives, even lost 1tb of files on my server because i forgot the -v flag, and dint find out about the server throwing the files into lala land and then deleting the originals, awesome huh?

Ive never had a physical problem with a drive before though, its always been the partition table getting nuked, or just doing stupid shit, wiping the drive before you've finished copying everything over lol. RAID doesn't do shit to protect against those things too, im using it for performance advantages but im not putting any faith in being able to recover the array. And I've never had any real luck with recovery programs either, If i really need the stuff back then quit screwing around and just sent it to someone is my opinion.

[SpireTECH]

Originally posted by 420Ninja
Well its not too hard to pop open a hard drive and check that shit out, just make sure you keep dust and stuff down to absolute zero.

Whatever you do, don't do this if you actually care about getting the data back. Exposing the platters to open air has about a 50/50 chance of junking the drive.

Also keep in mind, that there's almost no benefit to opening it up. Virtually anything that requires physical repair also requires specialty tools and parts. The only time this is beneficial to a DIY'er is when you have the EXACT same model of hard drive to use as a donor of parts or recipient of platters.