Trying to read what I can from a suspected broken HDD on Windows 7

steinooo · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:23

Hi all,

I have a 2.5" Sata HDD which i'm trying to recover any data I can from. I know it's half working as it does spin up, and when put in the laptop from which it originates it loads a recovery console for Windows 7, although I can't perform the basic recovery mode.

So I took the HDD out of the laptop and put it into a caddy and attached it to my Windows 7 pc which recognises it in Disk Management as "Disk 2, Unknown, Not Initialised". When I try to initialise it using MBR as the option it says Device not ready.

Any ideas on how I can try to get some data off this hard drive please?

Jacko197 · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:26

Ive done a few restores in similar circumstances by booting them up with an Ubuntu CD in the laptop, It will run direct from the cd and hopefully then let you browse the drive.

Worth a try

steinooo · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:30

will it read ntfs drives though? thanks for your reply.

Jacko197 · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:31

Yes, it does mate. You're welcome

cammy5477 · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:33

Jacko197 said:
Ubuntu
Worth a try

ubuntu ubuntu they drink it in the congo.....

steinooo · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:42

reckon it's worth trying ubuntu live before an Ultimate Boot Disc and some kind of repair function on that or something?

Jacko197 · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:44

Worth a try as it wont touch the drive at all, some sort of repair will mess with the drive and you may lose some files.

Its only a CD download too, so not that big

steinooo · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:47

good point, I have some linux distro on my xbmc live box, tempted to try it in that, only trouble is how to mount from cli, might have a go.... thanks for the help so far. Strange that linux may be a better option to read a (broken) windows disc than windows itsself!? :confused:

Jacko197 · 30 Dec 2010 at 19:51

Yea, it is but ive had good results with it in the past. Windows will only give you the option to format and you dont want to do that. You should be able to mount via cli but the commands will depend on what version its running.

steinooo · 30 Dec 2010 at 20:08

If I do

dmesg | grep -i "SCSI"

and I don't see the SATA Disk over USB, does that mean linux hasn't been able to detect it?

or shall I continue this in the linux forum?

Jacko197 · 30 Dec 2010 at 20:10

Not sure on that mate if im honest, never worked with USB drives in linux :confused:

steinooo · 30 Dec 2010 at 20:11

no probs mate, you've been a big help didn't think of putting it on a linux box first, cheers.

wilko49 · 30 Dec 2010 at 20:48

I would try dropping it into the system via SATA, and using dd to copy as much data as possible to a working drive. The command should be:

dd if=/dev/brokendrive of=/dev/workingdrive/filename conv=notrunc,noerror

obviously replacing with the correct drive names. You may be able to recover greater amounts of data, as you do not know how long the drive will continue to function. You may also like to specify a bs, smaller increases time but increases the amount of data you may be able to retrieve.

I used this to pull data off of a screwed drive, there was about a gig and a half which was unrecoverable. Rest of it got copied ok, but after a few attempts reading the missing blocks, the drive died completely.