Hard drive failure

Memnoch

Memnoch

Memnoch

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Joined
19 Jan 2006
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29
I have had a lot of problems with hard drives in the last few years. Now I own 3 hard drives totaling 500GB of space, all of which no longer work. I would like to recover the data, however I have no idea how.

The data is still on the drives, but the drives are no longer recognised by a computer. What is the best way to recover the data?
 
Memnoch said:
I have had a lot of problems with hard drives in the last few years. Now I own 3 hard drives totaling 500GB of space, all of which no longer work. I would like to recover the data, however I have no idea how.

The data is still on the drives, but the drives are no longer recognised by a computer. What is the best way to recover the data?
Click to expand...

Hmm. Tricky. Depends on why the drives are no longer recognised. If there was a hardware failure of the disk platter/heads then you're stuffed within any reasonable budget. If it's the controller it's theoretically possible to replace it with a known good one of exactly the same type (tried this once myself - it didn't work).

First step would be to diagnose the problem - probably using the manufacturers own Drive Fitness Test (or whatever they want to call it) downloadable from their website. Run it and tell us what the error message(s) are.
 
When installing one drive a pin bent in, when I turned on the computer it killed the drive. Now just with power the drive makes annoying beeping sounds.

Another hard drive has a burnt out transistor. I think the power supply was faulty (was a cheap one) and surged the drive. Ive now bought a good quality antec PSU.

Another drive when plugged in crashes the computer before it can enter BIOS. I have no idea why this one died.

EDIT: Im pretty sure its a controller issue. Unlikely the heads are faulty.
 
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You might be able to get the data off the one which crashes before the BIOS - a friend of mine who had a similar problem put it in a external USB hard drive enclosure and managed to get his files back off it.
 
Yeah, the first 2 sound like they're history, the thrid one has the same symptoms as my Raptor - and that was a failed controller too. Spent a long time trying to get files off it without success. Not much you can do about hardware failure other than replace the hardware...

I once had 2 seemingly identical IBM deskstars, one broke so I tried swapping the controller board over just to get the files off it. It didn't work (and it was a right pain with those fiddly connectors). When I put the controller back again I managed to corrupt the good drive! I think I'll rely on backups from now on.
 
The one that crashes before bios has the most important data on and is also the biggest. Ill try the hard drive enclosure to see if I can get the data.

Ive just bought a 74GB raptor, so I hope this will be a more stable drive than my old IDE drives.
 
I bought a 3.5" Sumvision external enclosure. I cant seem to get the drivers properly installed. The USB device is recognised as a "USB Mass Storage Device" for a few seconds and then it doesnt show in device manager anymore.

Either my hard drive doesnt work in the enclosure either, or the drivers for my enclosure are not compatible with my computer.

This is getting to be a bit annoying.
 
Yep Im using XP, I think I bought an old enclousure, so I think I will return it tomorrow. Looks like I may not be able to get the data off my drive after all, well unless I pay a company to do it for me. Speaking of which, how much does it cost to get someone to manually retrieve data?
 
Last quote i got for my old company was £3000 for a 160gb array of 3 disks, with one disk failed. We went the DIYroute, bought an identical drive, swapped the controller boards over - et voila one working disk again. Far cheaper!

The best software i have used by a long way for recovering data from Hds is restorer 2000 pro.
 
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