Another HD bites the dust

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tyefighter said:
Tom, stay away from the geek squad, they don't know anything.
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Thanks. I think I figured that out pretty quickly today  :(
 
TOM,

Try a different USB connector cable.  I have heard of cable failures.

JerryF
 
Thanks Jerry. In addition to a different USB cable, I also tried a firewire cable (the drive uses either one).
 
LOL Karl, I knew you were more than half serious. One thing I haven't yet tried is calling the drive manufacturer. I previously researched their web site and came up empty. I considered  trying the warranty route, but they state quite clearly that the first thing they do with any returned drive is to wipe the media and remove any and all data.
 
back in the 'bad old days' before hard drives were of any decent capacity, 1/2" magnetic tape was the only viable storage medium for large amounts of data. Sometimes a tape would become scratched or scrunched and unreadable, so we would have to 'develop' the bad portion to retrieve the data. This involved painting the tape with a solution of carbon tetrachloride with microfine particles of iron in suspension. The particles would migrate thru the solution to the magnetically charged bits on the tape, and you could then actually 'read' the bit pattern with a special microscope-like device and reconstruct the data; a very long and expensive process, but one which sometimes was the only option. And no, I'm not suggesting you try it on a modern hard drive!

There are a number of data recovery programs out there and they all work to a degree. The one I tried a few years back was able to retrieve some of the data, but none of the BMP's, JPG's, or WAV's. Maybe another program would have done a better job, but none of them come with guarantees. There are professional services that take the drives apart and use their own brand of smoke and mirrors to get your stuff back, but they are extremely expensive. 
 
Karl said:
back in the 'bad old days' before hard drives were of any decent capacity, 1/2" magnetic tape was the only viable storage medium for large amounts of data.
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LOL Karl, I recall mag tapes, but didn't have the pleasure of repairing any. Come to think of it, I still have some of the smaller tapes with archived data on them, but long ago decomissioned the PC that had my only remaining tape reader.

There are professional services that take the drives apart and use their own brand of smoke and mirrors to get your stuff back, but they are extremely expensive.
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I know, which was why I started this topic  :(
 
If you can install the drive in a PC and see it, but still not read it, you could try SpinRite.  But I still think it's the interface electronics rather than the drive but until you open the case and get the drive out, we won't know.
 
Ah, good old GRC. I'd forgotten about those folks.

Your message motivated me to give it another try and I just got the shell open. Used Karl's cutting torch method, but the drive now looks a little overcooked. They can't be damaged by heat, right?

Nah, just kidding. Those "rivets" were dummies under the label that says "warranty void if opened".  Now I can start doing something with the drive.
 
While doing some research on the GRC web site, I found a link to this interesting white paper on data recovery techniques. It includes some interesting information on hard drive technology. Having been a supplier to most of the drive manufacturers for a number of years, I was aware of much of the hardware technology, but wasn't aware of some of the software and data manipulation that's involved with writing and retrieving our data to normally working drives.

Failure modes and data recovery techniques discussed are also fascinating.

The white paper was chartered by a company in the business of advanced data recovery, but that bias is only apparent in the latter pages of the document where they tout their first-of-a-kind data recovery equipment.
 
Yesterday I got my Fry's Electronics fix. They had a good selection of "enclosures" for external hard drives. When I got home I was eager to get my non-functional drive into the new enclosure and try it. This time the error message changed to "Drive is not formatted. Format now?" Doesn't sound like the I/O electronics in the original enclosure was the problem.

I purchased and downloaded SpinRite, as suggested by Ned. But SpinRite can't see the external drive.

Plan B - I removed the drive from the enclosure and mounted it as a slave in Chris' desktop. Same symptoms as in the original enclosure - Win Explorer sees the drive, but can't access anything. Ran SpinRite and it sees my data, but I get the following warning:

"Invalid partition for drive size. This partition exceeds the size of this drive as defined by the system's BIOS or BIOS extension. You should not proceed to use SpinRite on this drive until you have verified and corrected the disparity between this drive and the BIOS' or BIOS extension's understanding of the drive size."

I've been reading as much as I can on the GRC web site and user forum, but haven't yet found an explanation of how to resolve the above disparity. Anyone have any suggestions?

TIA
 
So, did you recover your data from the drive?
 
Ned said:
So, did you recover your data from the drive?
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Not yet. All I can see is the stats that tell me my data is there. Can't go any further until I resolve the partition size discparity (see end of my prior message). Any suggestions? Right now, the only way to access the drive is with the DOS bootable floppy created by SpinRite and it's telling me not to proceed until I resolve the disparity.
 
If the partition table is damaged, I don't know of any way to restore it offhand.  Partition Magic suggests backing up the data, the deleting and recreating the partition, but that won't work for you.  There may be some partition table fixer programs but I'm not aware of any.  Some searching may turn something up.
 
Thanks Ned, I was afraid of that. Any more good news for me?

BTW I assume I could merely reformat the drive and re-use it as a fresh drive  ??? OTOH I'm not sure I'd be comfortable relying on the drive as my backup again.
 
With the low prices for drives, I wouldn't take the risk either.  I'll look around later and see if I can find any tools that might help.
 
Tom said:
Thanks Ned, I was afraid of that. Any more good news for me?

BTW I assume I could merely reformat the drive and re-use it as a fresh drive? ??? OTOH I'm not sure I'd be comfortable relying on the drive as my backup again.
Click to expand...

I don't think I would take the risk either.  But then I wouldn't give up on data recovery yet either.  I just bought a 300GB external drive for $150. after a $50 rebate. Hard drives aren't that expensive anymore.
 
Thanks Ned.

I recently bought an 80GB "rugged" USB portable hard drive that I'm currently using for backups. Small and light enough to put in a pocket. Actually, I'm reconstructing what I can of the backups that were on the failed drive. I held off buying a larger drive on the weekend to replace the failed drive, hoping I could restore it to its former glory. Since I now have two enclosures, I could have bought two internal HDs and popped them in the enclosures. As you say, prices are quite reasonable.

I'm going to return to my prior procedure of making CD (or DVD) copies of "can't lose" stuff. It's not foolproof, but at least there are no moving parts on a CD or DVD platter. That white paper did a good job of explaining the complexities of data storage on today's HDs.
 
Haven't totally given up on data recovery Ron, but the light at the end of the tunnel keeps getting further away.

Which brand of external HD did you buy? The one I lost was a Maxtor 250GB and I considered replacing it with one as large as I could find. Then I figured I'd be better off having two in the 250-300GB size and have one be a mirror of the other. But, reading that white paper really threw a wet blanket on everything  :(
 
We got a Seagate 300GB external firewire or USB2.0.  They had them on sale last week at Fry's  normally $279 reduced to $199 with with $50 factory rebate came to $150.  Second time Fry's has had this on sale in the last couple months.  Push the button on front of the drive will back up.  Also can be set up to do incremental backups. 

 
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