Unresponsive HDD Friend DESPERATELY needs file

[megabyteme]

EASEUS data recovery wizard can usually pull out damaged partitions. Its VERY good for it, I work with storage for a living, and that is a go-to tool for just this type of occasion.

Thank you, Travo1. Grabbing it to take a look tomorrow. Very well liked program from what I've seen.

That's good news. I had the click of death with an external drive two years ago; it wasn't nice.

Look forward to attempting the replacement of the MBR. That is, after some rest. Do not want to get careless while working on a last-ditch-effort.


NOTE- Just noticed anon was referring to partition tables, while I was thinking MBR. Can you clear me up on this difference?

The MBR is located in the first 512 bytes of a drive. It contains the partition table (or part of it if you have one or more extended partitions), as well as a small piece of code that tells the computer how to boot from the disk (not particularly important if it's only used for storing documents). If you wipe it, all the partitions and data will remain, but the OS won't be able to find them.

Each partition in turn has sectors at its beginning which fulfill a similar function, and are called the Partition (or Volume) Boot Record. What DiskGenius does is scanning the entire disk in search for PBRs, then writing a partition table that matches with what it's found. If the problem here is a damaged or missing table, this should solve it.

Thanks for clearing that up. Better for me to have my terminology correct before I go into surgery. Wouldn't want to be one of those doctors who remove the wrong foot...

[Broken]

I've read many times that a hard drive can be put in a couple of freezer bags, and out in the freezer overnight to get it working again for a brief period.

If it works, it may buy you the few minutes to sang what you need. Besides, at this point what could it really hurt?

[Artemis]

I've read many times that a hard drive can be put in a couple of freezer bags, and out in the freezer overnight to get it working again for a brief period.

If it works, it may buy you the few minutes to sang what you need. Besides, at this point what could it really hurt?

This is another old wives tale to a large extent, in that modern drives have far finer tolerances than when this was first purported to be a rescue option in the mid nineties. There is one exception to this rule, if the drives controller board has been overheated then cooling the drive can resolve the issue for a short period of time but, and this is a VERY BIG but, the chance of exceeding the drives environmental envelope is high, with the attendant damage this can cause. A far safer way to repair this issue is find an identical drive and swap out the controller boards.

The chances of damage from contraction of the metals in modern drives is very high along with the attendant danger of condensation, if there is condensation buildup in the drive from freezing then thawing it, then you've got yourself a neato new conversation piece of a paperweight.

[megabyteme]

Besides, at this point what could it really hurt?

Any shreds of hope remaining. We don't want to throw these away before baby HDD Jebus comes in and saves the day.

[IdolEyes787]

Not to make light of your friend's stupidity in blindly trusting to the god of technology only to find him to be a false one misfortune but maybe telling you what I did when I had a similar issue with data corruption will help.

Back when I was in University,I inadvertently ruined my roommate's Biology paper by spilling a soft drink on it so I took it and put in the least liked persons room and then preceded to lie through my teeth and tell everyone that he did it.

Have you tried that?

Btw obviously by "Biology paper" I mean Penthouse magazine and by "soft drink" I mean my man seed.

[megabyteme]

trusting to the god of technology

You are too kind.

----EDIT---

Is there anything I can do when my drive is not being recognized by the software? Got a partial connection, but no file structure with one.

[Artemis]

To be honest you are running out of 'easy' options fast. The drive's most likely problem is some bad sectors at the start of the drive, enough to corrupt the MBR and/or the the partition table. At this point I would suggest Spinrite as an option for refreshing the drive, but you have not recovered the data from the drive, and there is a chance that the drive will fail completely during Spinrite's operation, leaving you with the aforementioned paperweight. Although I have had some success with Spinrite in the past, the fact that the data on this drive is crucial means that I cannot recommend Spinrite in this case.

I personally would be suggesting to your friend that with the type of failure this drive has sustained the next safe step is to send the drive to a professional data retrieval firm.

[Stehle]

1.) A far safer way to repair this issue is find an identical drive and swap out the controller boards.

2.) To be honest you are running out of 'easy' options fast....I personally would be suggesting to your friend that with the type of failure this drive has sustained the next safe step is to send the drive to a professional data retrieval firm.

I believe other than drastic steps for resolution of your friends dilemma the two items in Artemis's quotes above may be the prudent course of action.

(Either way it's going to be costly and with no guarantees, but always remember discretion is the better part of valor.)

[anon]

So, what became of the disk's data?

[mitymek]

ive used the freezer technique with positive results twice. drives were like 8 yr old 5400 cheapos and didnt have anything to worry about except saving time by quick cloning em but i did get boot where before there was bsod. (shrugs)
(no expert here just redneck hobby type input fwiw)