HELP With Dead HDD

[Ali 0]

My backup HDD at work has picked up some bad sectors and i can't even ghost from it. i just need 1 folder out of it though!!!

 

is there any data recovery programs that could recover sector 0?

 

thanks in advance

 

(Have tried Scandisk)

[adamvjackson 0]

I saw someone, somewhere (was it here?) recommend GetDataBack. It goes without saying, that you should pull that drive out, and try recovering in another system.

 

And be sure that you do not write anything to the damaged disk.

 

Good luck.

[Ali 0]

Thanks for the tip. I'm gonna have to wait till Monday to go to work and try it.

[adamvjackson 0]

No problem; Perhaps by then some others will add their suggestions.

[Ali 0]

here is the problem now. no intel mother board can even boot when that HDD is hooked up. but our ghosting station (ASUS CUV4X mobo) can pick up the HDD and evn ghost can pick it up, but it won't read from it. especially with NTFS format.

 

any programs that can run from DOS? possibly could fit on a bootable Floppy?

thanks in advance.

[adamvjackson 0]

There is some commercially available software that creates boot disks, I know Ontrack's EasyRecovery Professional does so, but it is also fairly expensive.

[jmmijo 1]

You might want to try out this piece of software. It runs on pretty much any Win32 box, Win 9x ~ XP. This will allow you to move the drive to another machine and jumper it as a slave drive. The demo version only allows you to recover files/folders under 64K in size but it will at least tell you if that folder you need is shown

 

http://www.r-tt.com/

 

I used this to recover from a bad RAID 0 array. I couldn't get all the data but most if it

[Ali 0]

Thanks for the replies. R-Studio Agent that jmmijo has posted (Thanks) has an Emergency disk recovery program. I'll try that and see if it does the trick.

 

At this point me and my partner have collected some recovery programs and we will see which one will actually work!

 

If there are any other software, or tricks that can help us to recover some data from the dead HDD please post it untill the big day! The day we sit down and test them one by one untill we either kill the drive or get our data back! (that WAS our backup drive for god's sake !)

 

I have learned a few lessons from this:

1. never back up data on HHD's (especially SAMSUNG and WesternDigital ones!)

2. Burn all the important files on a full pack of 50 CDR's to get 50 copies so we won't be able to lose all of them! or at least it takes a long time to lose them! :x

 

Thanks

[jmmijo 1]

Another option is to look at either a DVD-RAM or DVD+RW drive as these have become much cheaper now, especially the internal ATAPI versions

 

You could also look into an internal TAPE drive solution but I find that the media costs our much more expensive then even the media for a DVD-RAM or DVD+RW solution. Here's another nice thing about most of the DVD recorder solutions, they support CD-R and CD-RW media as well

 

Remember that a HD is still a mechanical device, it's more prone to failure due to moving parts and thus media like CD/DVD is great for archival purposes.

[Ali 0]

Quote:

.....
Remember that a HD is still a mechanical device, it's more prone to failure due to moving parts and thus media like CD/DVD is great for archival purposes.

You are absolutely right. but our problem with all those driver CD's, o/s CD's and everything else that is on CD, or disks is that we have so many of those that we keep losing them! I even take a copy of all the disks home with me and bring them to work everyday, so i make sure i have all the ones i need.

the problem is CD's are way too cheap now and CDRW drives are so reliable and fast that we may just throw some CD's away just to keep the desk clean, thinking we will burn them again.

Well... Originating all those disks is another problem, where as a copy or ISO image of every CD is on an 80GB HDD on the service computer where it could be accessed through network and you can burn them anytime you need them. They are there but physically not taking up any space!

[jmmijo 1]

If needing them on a HD is required then may I suggest either a RAID 1 (mirroring) or a RAID 5 array be the answer. This way you can replace any defective drives as it happens. RAID 5 gives you the best of RAID 0+1 with parity

[Ali 0]

a very good suggestion. we are testing a server with windows server 2003. we do not have a hardware raid controller, but i may want to look at the software raid. I have never done that and i don't know how it works.

That is a very good suggestion. Thanks.

[ViolentGreen 0]

I feel for you. My primary hard drive went belly up after 2 months last night.

[jmmijo 1]

Quote:

a very good suggestion. we are testing a server with windows server 2003. we do not have a hardware raid controller, but i may want to look at the software raid. I have never done that and i don't know how it works.
That is a very good suggestion. Thanks.

You have to use Dynamic Drives for one thing, let's see what article number Microsoft has on this...

Go to the Microsoft KB page:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];kbhowto

And search for dynamic drive and you should come up with plenty of matches. One thing however, there seems to be a problem with the current versions of drive imaging software out there, i.e., Drive Image and Ghost that can not copy Dynamic drive volumes

I've heard there are going to be some updates soon to resolve these issues.

Personally I prefer to use a hardware RAID, more flexible. In fact my newest controller is the Promise SX6000 which supports RAID 0 thru 5 plus JBOD as well, quite handy indeed

[Ali 0]

Wow... the first software we tested worked like a charm! Ontrac Easy Recovery did it all! i'm impressed. we got 48GB of data out of a 40GB HDD! even the files we had deleted long ago are back! (not that we needed them, but still it is really interesting!)

 

thanks for all the suggestions. I think i will keep that HDD for more testing before i RMA it.

[Ali 0]

Can you have raid 0, 1 on Windows XP Pro? will it just improve the rate of data transfer when usin raid 0 with a Dynamic Disk? will it work as fast as a hardware raid?

I don't know anything about software raid. before i start messing around with the server, i think i'll buy 2 or 3 more HDD's and set them op on my Gigabyte Mobo. i already have onboard raid controller that i'm using. maybe i could try the software one along with it.