Help. SATA drive fail
 

BIOS recognizes my SATA 300 GB drive, but windows doesn't see it. Aconis Disk Director sees it, but simply says it's unreadable. Spinright crashes at 5672.

This is only the second HD in in the past 10 years I've had fail. The first one was a WD and at that time, I was able to recover the data from it with a dos based software, but I no longer remember the program or anything about it.

Anybody have any suggstions short of sending it back to Seagate? btw, the Seagate boot cd utility disk reviews it and simply says there are errors on it and to use traditional tools to repair: CHKDSK, etc.

When I had a drive fail. I was able to use Norton Ghost and image the drive.
Even though i could get anything off the drive, I was able to get it off the image!

And maybe try,
http://www.betaone.net/forum/thread-21810.html

Hope that helps
UN

This will sound a bit off the wall but it has worked for me on two Deskstars that failed. Put the drive in a plastic bag and leave it in the freezer for several hours. Set up your machine to use the dead drive as a data drive. Fit the frozen drive, fire up and then immediately copy off as much as you can. This seems to be a one-shot performance, I didn't manage to repeat it on either drive once I had closed down the machine.

Sounds screwy and I don't believe it comes with any guarantees (!), but it did work for me.

Freezer, I tried the drive in a freezer bag trick. Didn't work. I've read about it several times over the year.

user neeeds, It looks like I can get an image in dos mode using Acronis True Image, tho if that fails, I'll try Ghost.

Also, I ran Winternals Disk Commander from DOS and note I can make some changes to the HD, which I won't do until I can be sure I've got a good image, or clone. Last night I ran Acronis which said it would run for 6 hours and I thought the disk would fit on a blank 250 GB I have in the machine but it stopped after 4 hours (out of space). Gonna put in a larger HD and see how it goes.

Thanks for the tips.

I succeeded in making an image to another HD of the failed drive using Acronis True Image. It's of no value except to give me confidence in trying to recover the bad drive.

Winternals Disk Commander fails, None of the usual recovery utilities work. I used one from Hiren's that allowed me to see the data on the HD, in hex. Not sure what I'm doing, so any ideas are welcome.

One new wrinkle: with my finagling, the drive is now recognized by Windows, but of course Windows says it's corrupt and can't read anything on it. Norton Disk Doctor fails.......

Are you able to access the data on the image?

Sorry to hear of you problems and wish I could help. :(

Maybe I can learn something new reading. Hope all your data is saved soon.

@user needs. Nope. Can't mount the image.

@KC, Thanks for your thoughts, as usual, very sensitive.

Maybe I've found the solution. I know the data is there cuz I can read it in hex with DOS utilities on Hiren's Boot CD v8.5. I discovered a restore program there called DIY DataRecovery iRecover 2.1. But you need to buy the license. I did, for $Can 95. It looks like it's working. Let you know in the morning. It's after midnight here and the proggie still has a couple hours to run, but looks like it will do the trick. <hopeful smile>

Try this program "Recover My Files"
/http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

It works very well and has become my first choice recovery program.
The program allows a "free trial", it won't recover anything but it will let you see what can be recovered if you purchase it.

Let me know if you need more information.
Dave

Good Luck!

We have lift off. :D

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/index.htm

I can recommend DIY DataRecovery iRecover v 2.1 Bought the licesnse. Am very pleased.

Programs like Recover My Files wouldn't read the HD, saying unknown file structure, corrupted, etc. Even scanning with Seatgate's Boot CD simply revealed that the curruption was such that I'd need to use chkdsk, etc. However chkdsk would not run. Neither would any of the other popular untilities. It was in using the DOS ute's on Hiren's Bood CD that I started to figure out the the data itself was still there and there is a free version of DIY on that boot cd, but it's limited as an unregistered version.

DIY scanned the hd, created a virtual tree and allowed me to save what I wanted, which was most of it, since the HD contained all my personal files, jpg image archives, and a great deal more. I had this backed up as a redundant copy on a disk I hadn't synced to the original in nearly a year. Now setting up an external USB drive to be the redundant back up copy. I use SyncroMagic to sync the two. Losts easier than fooling around with a bunch of DVD's.

@user needs. No, I could not access the data in the image. it would not mount, because of the corrupt "whatever". The image merely gave me confidence to proceed--however, the DIY program made that unnecessary :)

Good news. :)

Good news indeed. I didn't have anything to add to this thread but followed it with interest, giving my own back-up routines a thought.
I'm very happy you got it solved - loosing data is a nightmare.

regards!

YES GREAT NEWS! :detective