Broken hard drive -- how to recover it?

[BIGTHUNDER]

I had a slave internal hard drive crash,started as rapid clk-clk-clk and nyyyyyyyyakk noises.I cannot start this hard drive and it has a lot of good stuff on it,my question is this,a program disk called "powersuite 2007" developed by Spotmau claims to be able to open the drive so one could remove stuff and or repair the disk,it is a downloadable program and does it sound to good to be true,cause it is???
:thanks::D

[celtic_druid]

You might want to try putting it in the freezer (in a sealed anti-static bag) for a while. Sometimes brings a drive back to life long enough to recover some data.

[BIGTHUNDER]

Hey,I sure will try this thanks

[BIGTHUNDER]

Putting the hard drive in the frezzer did NOT work

[Guest]

Implement a regular backup plan for your next hard disk. With cheap external USB drives and easy to use backup software, there is no excuse for not having a copy of your data.

If the data is really valuable, you can pay a data recovery firm to recover it. Any dilletantish efforts risk making things worse.

[evilclive]

I had a slave internal hard drive crash, started as rapid clk-clk-clk and nyyyyyyyyakk noises.

A clunking noise about six times a second is symptomatic of a read/write head sticking to something. A thermal shock is one method that might dislodge it, but a mechanical shock is often more useful.

There are different schools of thought as to how hard to thump the hard disk - I'd recommend a firm tap with the heel of your hand, as smashing it full force onto a hard surface will probably damage it still further. Do this with the power off, otherwise you'll just send the disk heads crashing into the data surface, which will create a ring of unreadable bad sectors.

The second, grinding noise indicates a stepper motor trying to force the drive heads to move beyond their normal range, i.e. into the walls of the hard drive enclosure. As the heads are supposed to park in a safe place when the power is switched off, turning the power on and off a few times might get them to pop back into place.

Before you do anything else, buy a new hard disk of equal or greater capacity. Work on the assumption that you'll only get one chance to get your data back, and that's if you're lucky. To copy the data onto this new hard disk, boot up with a Linux live CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/), and use the dd_rescue (http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Dd_rescue) command to perform a sector-by-sector copy onto the new hard disk.

[burfadel]

How old was the hard drive, and what make/capacity was it? Just curious :)

[Doobie]

Some good info here. Try scores of times to access the drive. I like the idea of having another drive ready to copy the data to, should you get the bad drive working, because it might work only one time. There's debate on how effective freezing the drive is, but you don't have much to lose by trying. Professional data recovery people would pull the platter(s) and put it in a compatible drive.

[Blue_MiSfit]

One more thing you can try - there's a great program called Stellar Phoenix FAT and NTFS.

It's a GREAT data recovery application, and has made me scads of money! However, it's not worth trying if the drive doesn't show up in the Device Manager. You don't have to have any partitions (since it can scan the drive to find lost file systems), but the physical drive must show up.

If this isn't the case, the drive is gone - and needs to go to the pros so they can swap the platters into a new drive in a clean room environment. Anything else is sheer and utter madness :D

~MiSfit

[laserfan]

the physical drive must show up. If this isn't the case, the drive is gone - and needs to go to the prosAlthough *I* have never done this, a neighbor with more $$$ than me spent over a grand to get his data recovered. :eek:

I have a bad drive that I attempt a recovery on every couple years. I think it has some valuable Tivo programs on it; don't even remember anymore. Maybe some day I will trip across a magic solution, but in the meantime even a new circuit board hasn't worked--must be a platter problem. :(

[HyperHacker]

Freezing worked for me, but it wasn't making noise.

[Video Dude]

I have had much success using R-Studio (http://www.r-studio.com/) for recovery. But for any software the head must still be able to work.

[jamewoong]

Putting the hard drive in the frezzer did NOT work
I second this. My second HD was almost dead. When I log into my Windows, I cannot see it. I scan it with Windows and it detects some errors. I boot my Windows and it is trying to fix it (the blue sreen with white text about indexing...).

So, I decide to put it in the freezer for 2 hours. Guess what? The Windows detect that HD and there was no errors. Weird, no?