recovering from catastrophic HDD failure?

[greenLED]

As if I didn't haven enough crap on my plate these days, the HDD on my laptop died last night....

Anybody has experience/can recommend a data recovery service?

My BIOS can "see" the drive, but when I plug it into another computer, I get a "need to format to access disk" message (yeah, right!). An experienced IT friend was able to recover a very small percentage of the data I have in there, but there're *years* of research data and a half-completed doctoral dissertation in there that are not easily accessible, and I cannot afford to lose!!

I have backups of the most critical components of my dissertation, but the vast majority of the supporting data, bibliography, digital maps, images, etc. are gone. It'd take me *months* to recover all that from scratch, and I really can't afford more delays in my work.

Any help would be most appreciated.

 

[nethiker]

Sorry to hear about your problem. I came across this post at lifehacker.com that lists some free utilities that may be of some help.

Good Luck.

 

[watt4]

a live linux cd is worth a shot. some are mentioned on the page nethiker linked

the idea is to copy your stuff onto a flash drive

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


if you're running XP, you'll probably want one that can read NTFS.

also, it's handy if it automatically mounts drives

 

[Fallingwater]

Your data might not have been lost.
I had a similar problem with a 200GB drive of mine. Its partition table had somehow gotten screwed up, but I used Acronis Recovery Expert (if memory serves me right) to restore the partition. All the data was still there.
Before you go spending thousands of dollars to have a professional data rescue company recover your data, try this way.

As for the backups, I find that it's much more effective to just keep all important data in two copies on two separate hard drives than to only back up selected parts of one.

 

[Arkayne]

One of the better data recovery places that the my university uses charges 298-1900 for recovery. If you feel like shipping the drive, check them out here: http://www.adv-data.com/

 

[MacTech]

Drivesavers.com has a well earned reputation as a data-recovery company, they'll take your drive into a clean room, dissasemble it, and extract the data, it's not a cheap service (average bill is around $2000), but if you have irreplaceable data on your drive, they should be able to recover it

on a side note, use this experience as a learning experience, *DO NOT* trust mission-critical data to a single hard drive, multiple backups on multiple different kinds of media is key, hard drives have very tight tolerances and moving parts, the read/write heads float ONE MICRON above the drive platters, less than the width of a human hair, the platters can rotate (depending on drive model) anywhere from 4200 RPM to 10,000 RPM

just to give you an idea of the tolerances in a drive, i had a dead drive i was stripping for the magnets (powerful rare-earth Neodymium magnets), it would spin, but not read data, the heads would rack back and forth, the drive was out-of-warranty and dead

i took the top plate off and powered it up, watching the read/write heads skitter back and forth across the platter

i grabbed a Sharpie permanent marker and held it to the center of the drive platter, and moved it out to the edge, slowly turning the drive platter black.....

the *INK* caused the drive heads to sieze to the platter, the tolerances were that close....

 

[CM]

...As for the backups, I find that it's much more effective to just keep all important data in two copies on two separate hard drives than to only back up selected parts of one.

+1. Redundancy is essential for backing up critical data.

 

[knot]

Miracle worker. Trust me. I lost all partitions - a complete loss then a complete recovery: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Will even create a new MBR if necessary.

Now depending on the mechanical problem, you may be able to freeze your hard drive: http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html
may be able to get even more time if you thermally isolate the hard drive from ambient temperature.

I use True Image to make a complete image of partitions I want to back up: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Image is stored on slave drive and removable media - page file is also moved to the slave drive

 

[MacTech]

Another solution, if your computer supports it (tower cases, mainly) is a Mirrored RAID array, basically two hard drives formatted as a single drive, you only see one hard drive icon, but the computer writes a perfect copy of your data to each drive, should one drive in a mirror fail, you can still use the other drive, swap in a replacement drive and rebuild the RAID off the remaining good drive

 

[binky]

I've read & heard many raves about SpinRite but I haven't used it. Maybe someone here can comment on it.

Whatever you use (though I'll second the Drivesavers gold-standard but expensive reputation), of course make sure it's in some sort of "forensic" mode so you're not altering any of the original data. But you know about that. Maybe you should do a disk copy to another drive first then work on that copy... I'm just thinking out loud here.

And I'm going to keep this thread in mind for myself since it has lots of good suggestions from other folks.

 

[gorn]

I have had luck recovering data from "dead" hard drives by freezing them over night them hooking them up to my forensic computer. It doesn't always work but it is worth a shot. I normally use EnCase or FTK to grab the data from drives. You can find several freeware programs that will do the same thing, just not as easy.

 

[2000xlt]

That stinks man, i hope you get some of your files back my other HD crapped, then i thought this one was going also, as i have mentioned in another thread, mine was sounding like a stopwatch so i bought and external drive, now it stopped ticking"making noise that is" any how I know that the amount of data in a recovery effort is really hit or miss. you will never know what you will be able to get untill you try. The tech guy at the school where i work at told me that befor he was working where he is now, he had a HD at his previous employers place of business crash, nothing he did was able to work. They wound up having an outside company transplant the drive into a new case, he said its literally like a operating room, seperate ventilation, filtered air, with white suits and self contained breathing apratuses. Of the 40,000 files which were needed only 500 were able to be recovered!!

that sucked IMO

 

[jayke]

I have used ACR Recoversoft Data Rescue - IT Version with great success to recover a few hard drives of clients. Best program I have used in years for HD recovery.

Joe

 

[Fallingwater]

Another solution, if your computer supports it (tower cases, mainly) is a Mirrored RAID array, basically two hard drives formatted as a single drive, you only see one hard drive icon, but the computer writes a perfect copy of your data to each drive, should one drive in a mirror fail, you can still use the other drive, swap in a replacement drive and rebuild the RAID off the remaining good drive

That is effective for enterprises, where speed is essential, the price of a hard drive failing every now and again is no big deal and there is security patrolling the premises.
Personally, I find my home backups are safer in an external drive box.

A redundant RAID array isn't a smart choice for the home user for several reasons:
1) both drives are in the same computer. If a thief steals your case, your data goes bye-bye. If your PSU dies and in the process applies mains power to your drives, your data goes bye-bye. If you slip while carrying your computer from one room to another and drop it down the stairs, your data (probably) goes bye-bye.
2) When the computer wants disk access both drives are running, and thus wearing out. By the time the first drive dies, the second one may be only a few days away from its own death.
3) With time a redundant array is going to become harder to repair, as it needs two drives of precisely the same type. Good luck finding 120GB drives three years from now, let alone those of a specific make and model.

Keep the main disk in your computer and the backup one in a drawer (better if in another room), and you stand a much better chance of thieves ignoring what looks like a useless lump of metal with some circuits (the average thief is unlikely to be versed in information technology). It'll also survive any damage that would destroy your case, unless of course a house-wide disaster occurs (fire, flood, explosion...), at which point data recovery will probably not be at the top of your priorities.

Keep the backup drive powered down, only powering it up occasionally to keep the backup up do date, and it'll have plenty of life left when your primary drive eventually fails.

And as for drive replacement, yes, you can replace both drives with newer ones and copy the data over, but it's more expensive. Besides, if you're only backing up text or other typical office data, upgrading to 500gb drives because one of the 40gb drives of your array failed will mean most of the capacity of the newer drives will stay unused. In an external box configuration you can just rip the drive out of any non-prehistoric throwaway computer and use that for free.

 

[zelda]

I made good expierience with Acronis Disk Director. I restored a 200GB IDE Disk with success. (External drive who was fallen on the ground) . It took 36 hours for reading, selecting data and restore to another disk.

zelda

 

[prof]

GreenLED,

First, I'll be sending you another email in a moment or two.

Second, consider off-site backup. I used to stash backups of my dissertation in the safe deposit box, and at my parents' house. You can also use online sites like xdrive or even a web hosting company (email me if interested, I can recommend a great one).

I know this stinks.

 

[WNG]

There's Mozy.com
2GB free online backup for freebie accounts.
Uses Blowfish encryption to protect your files.

 

[Burgess]

Gee, i had this very problem myself, two weeks ago.

But MY hard drive isn't even RECOGNIZED by my BIOS setup.

Am gonna' look at some of the solutions posted here.

But can't be gettin' my hopes up.

Even tried the "freeze it overnight" method. No dice.


BTW, it's an Hitachi DeskStar 400GB SATA drive. Running Windoze XP prof.

Exhibiting the infamous "DeathStar Click of Death".


Never gave me a moment of trouble in its two years of existence.


Just decided one day that it wasn't gonna' work anymore.


Wish me luck, guys.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

a live linux cd is worth a shot. some are mentioned on the page nethiker linked

the idea is to copy your stuff onto a flash drive

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


if you're running XP, you'll probably want one that can read NTFS.

also, it's handy if it automatically mounts drives

Another vote for a live Linux CD. I've recovered stuff from a "really dead" NTFS drive using it. There's also the Ultimate Boot CD site.

 

[cbdudley]

I've also had very good success with a bootable Linux CD-ROM. The latest version of Ubuntu (7.04) also supports both reading and writing to NTFS partitions.