A follow up to the IDE/SATA to USB thread. Device purchased and it works. One particular drive, a Seagate Barracuda 160 GB 7200.7, which is probably almost 20 years old, cannot be read.
I can see the drive as F:\ in Explorer (W10 32 bit, via Lenovo laptop) but, after the disk has been spinning a while, a message appears when I click the drive :
F:\ is not accessible The parameter is incorrect
I think this disk died when I found my son, then a toddler, switching the PC on and off rapidly. Google suggests CHKDSK but warns that all data will be lost. Any way to access the drive without destroying the data?
The first thing to do with a suspect drive is to take a bit-for-bit image of it. That gives you a 160GB file that you can then throw at recovery tools. You keep a master copy of that file, and the recovery tools only work on a duplicate. If they fail, you delete the duplicate and make a new clone from the master copy.
I don't know the tools on Windows, but on Linux the basic bit-image copier tool is 'dd' and there are versions called 'ddrescue' and 'dd_rescue' (which are different) that aim to take the best bit image they can even from drives with intermittenly bad sectors. Once you've done this you carefully pack away the original drive and do all the work on the clones. If the drive is failing you may only get one shot at cloning it before it goes phut.
I would look for 'clone' and 'recovery' tools for Windows, with the emphasis that you should never write anything to the suspect drive. That is only for tools that work on images, or possibly clone it to a new drive (which is fine to be larger than 160GB) and then work on the cloned drive. (although I'd really want at least two cloned drives)
It is possible to run it under windows, but don't do that. I did once and regretted it because the PC locked up after a few days of copying and after I rebooted it Windows then decided to fix the disc itself which completely broke it. Use a USB stick with a bootable version of linux and the gnu version of ddrescue. There are two similar but unrelated programs called ddrescue or dd_rescue but different distributions are inconsistent about the use of the underscore, so you can't use this to differentiate them. Look for the GNU version. ddrescue works by starting to copy from one end of the disc. Once it finds a block that it can't read after a few tries it switches to copying from the other end. It them tries reading from a spot near the middle, reading one way then the other and so on. In this way, it never tries too hard to read any bad area until it has collected all the low-hanging fruit first. Eventually it works really hard to get the most stubborn bits of data, and it may destroy the drive in the process - but only after getting all the good stuff first. Make sure to use the log file option, so that if the pc crashes - which can happen quite often when reading corrupt drives - it knows what it has already copied and does not need to waste time (which may be very limited before the drive dies completely) in re-copying stuff that it already has. I once tried various commercial recovery programs on a severely damaged drive and found that ddrescue was effective when the commercial ones gave up. It is worth trying an external USB drive adapter if the controller in the PC does not want to talk to the disc or if it crashes too often. Sometimes that extra isolation between the drive controller and the rest of the system helps avoid crashes. As already mentioned, once you have the best image of the original that you can manage, clone this and use your favourite recovery tools on the copy. If you get impatient and take short cuts here you will be much more likely to lose your data forever. John
Not all desktops have the connectors needed. Depending on whether the desktop is at extreme ends of the time scale. A year 2000 won't have a SATA connector. A year 2022 won't have an IDE connector. However, via adapter cards, in some cases this can be fixed. I have a Promise Ultra133 TX2 for example, that I think Windows 10 still has a driver. There are a lot of crusty cards we would rather not use, but you use whatever you've got. There are VIA combo cards with an IDE connector and a SATA connector, as another example of junk that is kicking around.
In any case, be sure of your "fundamentals" before continuing.
What I'm trying to do here, is ensure you're giving the drive a fighting chance. If it appears to operate for a short time, there might be a lot right with it.
Inside the desktop, it has a better source of cooling air.
To do data recovery, you should have a couple spare drives which are at least as big, or bigger, than the troublesome one. Your first step is making a copy with dd or ddrescue (gddrescue package in Linux).
dd does not tolerate CRC errors. If CRC errors are happening, you have to switch to ddrescue. While Windows has plenty of utilities, the handling of CRC errors is not well documented.
formatting link
formatting link
Command Prompt window, Administrator one
dd.exe --list
That gives size info, helping you to craft a command. That is a "very friendly" command on that utility, worth its weight in gold. The output syntax even hints as to whether you have access rights for the transfer. If the size is not listed, that spells trouble.
# Double check you are using the right source and destination disk numbers. # Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) can visually offer a hint, compared to dd --list # In this example, an old drive Harddisk2 is transferred to harddisk3. # The total disk transfer is 500,107,862,016, which is a standard 500GB HDD. # The older drives tend to work OK with 221184. Divide total size by 221184 # and make sure you use the right count. 221184 * 2261049 = 500,107,862,016.
If there is even one CRC error, that command stops and the transfer is no good.
Disks have two partitioning schemes, MSDOS legacy (MBR) and GPT disks (newer). The above instructions are not sufficient for GPT, due to the potential for mishandling of the secondary GPT partition table near the end of the disk. Using dis-similar drive sizes requires extra steps (helps if you're using a proper utility, rather than the command line).
If you can make an image, we can continue on.
Making an image, is for cases where the drive is really sick.
*Do not* run CHKDSK on a disk drive which is on its last legs. This will destroy all chances of data recovery. It works like this.
Sick drive ==> dd to spare disk 1 ==> dd to spare disk 2 Golden copy... Do CHKDSK on this one... Since it is a copy, we don't care if CHKDSK ruins this drive. We can make another copy from Spare Disk 1.
Thank you all for the helpful notes. Way beyond my comfort zone and probably impractical using my little laptop. However, son (who broke it in the first place!) will be home during the summer, complete with self built fast gaming PC and a little Linux experience. He has agreed that we will install the damaged disk in his tower, and go from there. I will report back.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.