Unresponsive HDD Friend DESPERATELY needs file

[megabyteme]

point easy recovery pro at that bad boy yet? (ontrack if i recall correctly). should ignore all the acronyms at the front and give you a list of files like porn.jpg etc etc. drag em off and then try format or whatever.

I'll see what it can do tomorrow. Thanks for the rec.

[MysticRiffs]

I use Active@File Recovery Professional to recover the MBR in my business, mate. Another thing you can attempt to do is to clone the drive via a CD (no OS getting in the way). Cloning won't automagically solve the issue, but it will let you then recover data if it's a combined issue of corrupt MBR and bad sectors.

Hope this helps.

[Artemis]

I appreciate the rec, pooty. I discussed the option of sending the drive out with him and he said he did not want to do that. I'm going to do everything possible before giving up. Good experience; unfortunate that the data is so irreplaceable.

It's obviously not that irreplaceable if he isn't prepared to pay to have the data retrieved....

We can dance around the issue and be pleasant, but actually if the data was that vital to his business he was a grade A card carrying moron to not have some form of backup, either local through a storage medium or cloud based through a backup service like: http://backup.comodo.com/ which is also incidentally free.

[megabyteme]

I use Active@File Recovery Professional [...]

Hope this helps.

This is the only prog (so far) I have not been able to find on torrents. The persistent problem here is that no progs can even see enough of the drive to begin working on the damage.

It's obviously not that irreplaceable if he isn't prepared to pay to have the data retrieved....

We can dance around the issue and be pleasant, but actually if the data was that vital to his business he was a grade A card carrying moron to not have some form of backup, either local through a storage medium or cloud based through a backup service[...]

He knows. I think he's gotten a bit spoiled having never suffered a failure from 12-ish years of the PCs I've built for him. We have discussed backups and having a redundant RAID drive for any business-specific machine I'd do for him. Unfortunately, he has had this file sitting on a machine he purchased second hand, sent to him via a Yahoo account he no longer has any details for. The customer list was built 3-4 years ago. Perfect storm of fuckup.

If he'd placed it on ANY other machine, he'd still have the damn thing.

[mitymek]

always amazes and infuriates me when working on a drive issue. its like the fix is gonna be so simple and instant and its just like one click away, but then, so might be disaster lol . and it always happens after just enough time has passed that i cant remember what the heck worked or what box of discs in which closet is the last recovery tools. you have that enclosure going for ya so that helps a bunch. i hope the easy recovery pro lets you see the file you need. then you can take the dang drive out to the garage and beat it to death with a large hammer. you'll get it. cool how you had enough sense to back away from the thing and clear your brain. my wife used to freak on me cuz i would stay up all night and then some trying to get a system back. to hardheaded to know when to step away.
good luck , let me know if i need to dig in the closet for ya

[megabyteme]

I did give ERP a shot at it. Unfortunately, it did not see the drive. Ive got time on my side, though. Just received a new WD Black drive and new power supply. Going to get his PC back to him so his wife can resume (yes, his all-important file was sitting on his wife's computer - hence the push-it-til-it-breaks mess we are in) then chip away as "good" days come around. Still waiting for one of those...

[mitymek]

I did give ERP a shot at it. Unfortunately, it did not see the drive. Ive got time on my side, though. Just received a new WD Black drive and new power supply. Going to get his PC back to him so his wife can resume (yes, his all-important file was sitting on his wife's computer - hence the push-it-til-it-breaks mess we are in) then chip away as "good" days come around. Still waiting for one of those...

ugh, ive got 2 drives that went dumb on me way back in dalnet/mirc days and i keep trying to "see" them whenever im working on drive issues for whatever reason.
logic being the op system and recovery technology keeps getting better so why not try....
ive always felt that they got nuked by a badass file from the dark side folks because i was being dumb and trying to dig up a key to some program off a google search when the lights went out.
one of em was a beloved raptor that was half a matched set.
so far nothing ive tried detects these drives but they spin up ok mechanically.
old school junk in todays world, no doubt loaded with win xp booty lol
but hey, its the thrill of the challenge sometimes dangit!
will be watching to see what finally works for ya.
luck to you sincerely

[megabyteme]

[...]half a matched set

Ouch. And apparently not the kind of set where they mirror each other.

I will keep this thread up-to-date. Especially when I succeed.

[Artemis]

I did give ERP a shot at it. Unfortunately, it did not see the drive. Ive got time on my side, though. Just received a new WD Black drive and new power supply. Going to get his PC back to him so his wife can resume (yes, his all-important file was sitting on his wife's computer - hence the push-it-til-it-breaks mess we are in) then chip away as "good" days come around. Still waiting for one of those...

ugh, ive got 2 drives that went dumb on me way back in dalnet/mirc days and i keep trying to "see" them whenever im working on drive issues for whatever reason.
logic being the op system and recovery technology keeps getting better so why not try....
ive always felt that they got nuked by a badass file from the dark side folks because i was being dumb and trying to dig up a key to some program off a google search when the lights went out.
one of em was a beloved raptor that was half a matched set.
so far nothing ive tried detects these drives but they spin up ok mechanically.
old school junk in todays world, no doubt loaded with win xp booty lol
but hey, its the thrill of the challenge sometimes dangit!
will be watching to see what finally works for ya.
luck to you sincerely

If the drive(s) spin up but aren't seen at all, the problem is in the controller. Hopefully being older drives you can track down similar drives i.e. the same model, relatively cheaply and use them as donors. As I said before removing the logic board from a hard drive is relatively easy, it just depends how much you value the data on the drives. I have found over the years that within six months the data is usually redundant and the 'pain' of losing the drive is a vague memory....

[megabyteme]

If the drive(s) spin up but aren't seen at all, the problem is in the controller.

That seems to be the problem here. I'll look into it. Gnu ground...