Getting some data out of a faulty hard disk

Alex53 · 9 Feb 2010 at 10:29

Or trying to anyway.

Its a 300GB Samsung hard disk. I backup all my essential stuff, but even though the stuff on this drive is not essential, it would same me a lot of time if I can actually get some of it back. The Samsung utility I ran on it detected many bad sectors, but not all of them were bad of course.

How would you approach trying to get the data back? I've tried putting the disk in a USB enclosure and Windows lists it in the disk manager, but it wont initialize it. Using an Ubuntu Live disk, also lists the disk in the Partition Editor, but it cant be mounted. Maybe I need to fix the mbr or the partition table, or both?

Also, could Ghosting the disk to a healthy one work? Since its copied in 'raw' the new one would have a lot of corrupt files but no bad sectors?

Suggestions welcome

Alex53 · 9 Feb 2010 at 13:18

Well, Windows didnt want anything to do with the drive and neither did a Linux live CD. Acronis True Image can't use a dynamic disk as source. An old version of Norton Ghost didn't help either.

One of the times the BIOS managed to see the drive properly and Windows was displaying the disk in the disk manager (although unable to initialize it) I downloaded and installed GetDataBack for NTFS (Version 4.00). It scanned within and managed to find the files. I could even play files from within it's interface to make sure its not just a text listing of the files, it actually manages to open them. To copy the data out you have to register the software, so I've paid through paypal and waiting for them to send me a key. Well worth it for £50, so it looks like this will have a happy ending...

J.B · 9 Feb 2010 at 13:43

You could have tried the Samsung utility which is a boot CD, might of had some luck

Vampyre · 9 Feb 2010 at 14:16

Alex53 said:
Well, Windows didnt want anything to do with the drive and neither did a Linux live CD. Acronis True Image can't use a dynamic disk as source. An old version of Norton Ghost didn't help either.

One of the times the BIOS managed to see the drive properly and Windows was displaying the disk in the disk manager (although unable to initialize it) I downloaded and installed GetDataBack for NTFS (Version 4.00). It scanned within and managed to find the files. I could even play files from within it's interface to make sure its not just a text listing of the files, it actually manages to open them. To copy the data out you have to register the software, so I've paid through paypal and waiting for them to send me a key. Well worth it for £50, so it looks like this will have a happy ending...

GetDataBack is a great piece of software that has saved my bacon on a couple of occasions.

wannabedamned · 9 Feb 2010 at 14:18

R-studio, It's a god send. but it also costs money

Alex53 · 9 Feb 2010 at 16:28

J.B said:
You could have tried the Samsung utility which is a boot CD, might of had some luck

I did. All it does is diagnose, not retrieve data.

GetDataBack is almost finished copying what looks like practically all my data. A couple of mp3s and a movie have failed due to bad sectors. It popped up saying so and you have the option to skip that file and continue copying.

tbh I am glad I have paid for it and have it as a last resort for any future problems.