HDD died - recovery ?

[rick]

Have a Western Digital 1TB internal 3.5" HDD Just stopped during use .... Drive is under warranty so should get it replaced - but they won't recover the data. I had a backup .. but a months worth is missing .... (should backup more than once a month I know)

On windows PC it is no longer seen, a friend connected it to a MAC and it could be seen & scanned .. but he was unable to recover any files.

Anybody know of anyone that does data recovery as a sideline ?

Professional companies charge hundreds to do this.

In case someone suggests it - I have tried the freezer trick.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Have you tried a live linux CD?

Mount the drive and copy it to another?

[Clive George]

Plug it into another computer and give the various data recovery tools a go - there's plenty of them to try, and they mostly offer a free trial so you can see you've got data before you have to pay them.

[Caecilius]

I used ddrescue to recover data from a friend's failed laptop drive a few years ago. I was able to recover all the important data.

It took quite a while, but once it's started the recovery process is automatic.

[tabbypurr]

yep. Now is the time you discover that backup doesn't read either, so you can only restore from 2 months ago.

Well, its time consuming. You could try some young geek but unless they do the right things right away your chance of recovery fades away.

I don't think that has worked in a long time.

NT

[mike]

The internal drive on our Mac failed last year. There were signs it was fa iling but needless to say I waited till it died the death before taking it in to the local service centre. The Mac is sufficiently old (i.e. not that old at all) that Apple support in Ireland consider it "vintage" and said i t was unsupportable at Apple stores. These guys replaced the drive and reco vered all the date for, IIRC, about £100.

They have a price menu and I think they have a "no data recovery, no fee" policy.

Don't know if that's any use to you but I throw it into the mix knowing how hard it is to contemplate the loss of six years worth of photos of the cat .....

[Jethro_uk]

I had a HDD fail big time. Basically it just stopped being recognised at all.

No amount of trying to mount on a linux system would work - whatever was

****ed prevented the system even seeing an event on startup.

It was one half of a raid array, so no harm done ...

[whisky-dave]

but that was Apple using Mac he's disk is from a PC so I doubt Apple would be interested. Not sure why you couldn't use a Mac to drag most of the user files off to another drive.

[Davey]

I had that with a Seagate external HDD that I used for TV programme Backup. It fell, and landed on my foot, didn't even crash to the floor, but it was enough to totally destroy any communication. There's just nothing there. It spins, but that's it. Luckily, I had Backup backup. There is a label that says something about not exceeding 3,000 G or whatever, it must have been more like 3 G, but it killed it.

[rick]

I plugged into into a PC via a SATA to USB interface ... nothing seen so I can't run any tools. Nothing shows in diskmanager

[rick]

I have reinstalled and restored to a new HD ... so only want to recover the docs etc. fro 1 month

[Allan]

Backup frequency/habits?

Just curious as to what others do. Me, for SOHO:

I image (that's image, as in boot from Acronis (Linux?) CD not just 'backup' and outside of Windows) about once a week internal HDDs, onto an external HDD (2 external HDDs rotated in case of failure of backup media) and stored away from office. That means that if a disk fails, I can put an image back, no having to reinstall OS and then software then data/docs/photos. Maybe I'm old school

Covers (hopefully) against disk failure, fire and theft... Has saved my bacon (on another site) at least once.

Just curiouos what others do, and welcome any tips.

[The Natural Philosopher]

If you really care about data, you have to have a plan to deal with 100% irrevocable sudden loss of a disk.

My important data lives on many disks. They are not raided, because I back up several machines onto one of the disks.

Three years ago that disk died. The backup oddly enough.

I bought a new one, stuck it in, and 24 hours later it was full up with backups, and my ISP was warning me about overuse of my connection...

Then I bought a bigger main disk, stuck a new OS on that and restored from backup onto it. an afternoons work and I was back in business.

[rick]

I have no experience of Linux ... do you know if there are any guides anywhere on how to do this. I do have: Linux OS winboot and Hirens disks.

[rick]

A guy use a mac to test - it did allow disc to be 'seen' and scanned, but no daat recovered. Which may mean its time for teh bin .......... but want to see if anything's worth checking.

Just looked at Youtube video where guy opens them, resets head closes up and it works ..... worse case is I do that as last attempt.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That may be recoverable by giving it a new PCB. Companies that specialise in recovering dead drives usually have plentyy of spares.

I did this once. to get data off a dead drive. It worked, but the next day we had a meeting to decide how to make sure we never ever had top do that again.

Tape was the answer, but it never worked properly.

Today,. disks are so cheap, you simply have several and raid or mirror or backup between them.

Unless you have a Mac or a winders Peecee, cos they probably don't have decent tools

[Tim Streater]

If it fell on your foot from say a height of 4 ft, then when it hits your foot it's already going at 16 feet per sec. Assume it then has to stop within 1/2 inch, that gives:

0 = 16**2 + (2 x a x 1/24)

with a being the acceleration in feet per sec per sec. That gives:

a = -3072 or 3072/32 G = 96 G

What are those jobs rated at?

[Bod]

[rick]

Doing all your backups in The Cloud will be the way to go .........BT gives free space (not enough for me), Amazon gives unlimited space for £55 a year I'm sure it will all become cheaper with competition.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If you watch the average 'CSI' type prog on TV, you'd think it a straightforward job to recover data from a failed HD. My experience said the opposite. I bought a second identical used but good one and swapped the PCB. Didn't work. Sent them off to a data recovery place who claimed vast success rates and only charged if successful. Got the impression all they actually did was what I'd already tried.

I had visions of them removing the platter in some clean room and fitting it to a general purpose rig that could read it - if anything was left worth reading.