Unresponsive HDD Friend DESPERATELY needs file

A friend has an important file for his business on a HDD that is not responsive on its home PC, and is hanging mine up each time I try to connect to it.

Have tried an external drive enclosure via USB

Via Linux USB rescue drive on thumb: reads that drive is connected, but unable to access

Using W$7, hot plugging into SATA does not bring drive into Explorer


I need to rescue this one file from the drive. Will go to ANY lengths. Do I need to physically rebuild the drive using the platters? Is there a better method available?

Get a copy of BootICE (freeware) and WinHex (not free, but a lifesaver for these things). Can they see the drive and partition(s) within, and read sectors from it? If so, what do the MBR and partition table look like?

Also, do not disassemble the disk, and nor attempt to do any physical repairs. Those require an specialist. The platters are vacuum-sealed, and any extraneous particle can screw them up.

Thanks, anon. Trying the latest version of WinHex now. :happy:

Things are not looking good for the drive, but there are some options to work through. One suggestion at this point is to use a Linux LiveCD distro to access the drive, one that is tailored for this type of problem i.e. Knoppix or GParted Live.

One thing though, the drive isn't 'ticking' or making unusual sounds as it tries to access i.e. sticktion problems?

This is why I still have an old copy of Hiren's BootCD (before the software companies rained down on him with threats of legal action) lurking in my toolkit.....

I tried the livecd (via thumb) earlier. I'm going to try it again. System is hanging TERRIBLY with that drive connected. Important file that contains customer info for marketing. Irreplaceable.

A corrupted partition table can cause those freezes, by refencing disk sectors that either don't exist or aren't part of the partition they're supposedly associated with. In this case you can wipe the first sector to stop the freezing, then use DiskGenius (it's included in Hiren's Boot CD 9.8) to rebuild the table. Mind you, that's only one possible cause, and the easiest to deal with at that.

Hopefully this will turn out to be a near-miss, and your friend will learn the importance of backups in a business environment. :)

I was manfully trying to hold back on the backup speech myself.....

A bit more info on the drive itself would help too though, Make model capacity etc. I say this because some manufacturers have their own diagnostic tools for their drives.

Thanks, guys. Still having NO luck. Calling it quit after 6.5+ hours. Downloading a newer version of Hirens (restored), which contains "PartitionGuru" (aka DiskGenius). Will battle the forces of evil (boot records) tomorrow.

Inspection of the machine, as well as talking to my friend about the symptoms before failure, and all indications point towards an overheated processor. I can only imagine the "quality" of data being copied to the HDD. :frusty:

As I am not entirely new to data recovery, but new to situations this dire, if you could point me towards reliable tutorials for fixing this sort of thing it could make my life quite a bit more livable endurable. This project REALLY has me stressed... :sadwalk:

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Originally Posted by Artemis

I was manfully trying to hold back on the backup speech myself.....

A bit more info on the drive itself would help too though, Make model capacity etc. I say this because some manufacturers have their own diagnostic tools for their drives.

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I am on the same page, Art. I just tried WDLifeguard Tools to no avail. Interestingly, it is one of my long-term reliable drives (although this particular one never crossed my desk, or I wold have done some things MUCH earlier to the PC)- WD Black 500GB AAKS model.

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Originally Posted by Artemis

One thing though, the drive isn't 'ticking' or making unusual sounds as it tries to access i.e. sticktion problems?

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No problems spinning; no ticking; no unusual arm tracking sounds. Leaves hope, it seems...

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. :no:


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

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.

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Originally Posted by megabyteme

No problems spinning; no ticking; no unusual arm tracking sounds. Leaves hope, it seems...

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

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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. :no:


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

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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.