Anybody know anything about failed hard drives?

[jakerman999]

I've got two end of term programming projects due on Monday. Obviously, 3 in the afternoon is the best possible time for my hard drive to crash and send several weeks of work and an entire semester of education into the dung block beacon. I won't be able to finish my c++ work on time unless I can get this back on track before midday Sunday, and my external drive bay isn't reading the drive as a valid disk.


Anyone know how to recover a hard drive?

[Ethazeriel]

Ouch man, that really sucks.

I've dealt with hard drive failures before, so I have a few questions:

Does the drive spin up?
If it does, does your computer recognize its presence at all?
Is there any chance you have another hard drive of the same make and model at hand? There is a decent chance that the failure is in the circuit board of the drive, and if you have an identical drive you might be able to switch the two circuit boards and recover the data.

Best of luck man, I know how it hurts to lose important stuff like that.

[Kaitocain]

1: Is the drive spinning at all? If it isn't, then your only savior will most likely be sending it off to a professional recovery service to get your stuff back.

2: If the drive is spinning, does the bios on the machine recognize it? If it does, then you may just be in luck, as you can try booting into a recovery os (such as Parted Magic or Hiren's Boot CD) and making an image of the drive (using a drive imaging program of course) and then recovering from that.

3: If you can't image it, for whatever reason, your best bet then would be to use a program like Recuva or Testdisk / PhotoRec and seeing what it can find on the disk, if anything at all.

I wish you the best of luck, and if you need anything, I can always attempt to help in anyway I can.

[jakerman999]

Drive spins up.

Computer sees the drive, but lists it as having a quantity(and free space, used space etc.) of 0 bytes.
No media, no volumes. This is when in an external USB bay.

Bios doesn't see the device.

I don't have an identical drive, sadly.

I'm currently looking for something that can grab SMART data off a usb-sata drive.

[Ethazeriel]

Computer sees the drive, but lists it as having a quantity(and free space, used space etc.) of 0 bytes.
No media, no volumes. This is when in an external USB bay.

I'd see whether you can recover the drive using TestDisk. Hopefully that will work. If not, as far as I know you're pretty much out of luck given that you don't have a duplicate drive. It definitely sounds to me like something on the drive's PCB has failed. If you are unable to recover the data using TestDisk, I would suggest taking it to a computer repair shop to see whether they have any other advice. Otherwise, unless you want to send it to a professional data recovery service (which generally takes a long time, is expensive and is not guaranteed to work). Best of luck man, I hope this all works out for you.

[weldaSB]

I read this on the internet once (you can trust everything there ;) ) that you can put it in your freezer for an hour and take it out and you will have like 20 minutes to recover files. If your desperate its worth a shot. I would recommend attaching it as an external hard drive after you have booted . If it's SATA you can hot-swap it on. Anyways I think that I found that tip on a creditable source(lifehacker I believe). in the future you might want to invest in two identical drives and do a backup raid config(I believe raid 1), or get a github account and use that as a backup.

[Confector de Caeli]

I too have dealt with a lot of hard drive failures. Your situation doesn't sound great. The fact that your computer is seeing no data on the disc is not good. When you run the hard drive does it make any odd noises or clicking? If not, it is probably a logical failure, in which case the data is recoverable with a data recovery program (I recommend TestDisk or Recuva). If you do, there is a mechanical failure, which is much harder to fix. In either case, I don't think that you could resolve the issue in time, since data recovery can take hours or even days, especially since your data will come out in a jumbled, disorganized mess that will take a long time to sift through. I would suggest trying the device out on another computer just in case there is some technical issue with the first that you plugged it into. If there is a mechanical problem, the post above me suggests cooling the drive to decrease minutely the size of some of the near-touching metal components. This almost never works and, in fact, may further damage the drive, but, if you get really desperate, just make sure you double bag the drive before cooling it (plus, plug it in while it is still cool). Otherwise, with a mechanical failure, you will likely need to resort to a data recovery company, which is expensive and not in your time frame. An alternative would be to manually replace some of the components, but you would need to purchase an identical drive and know your way around the hardware. I am sorry if my post offers few solutions and is kind of depressing, but such is the situation.

[jakerman999]

Testdisc doesn't see the drive. Every other utility I've looked at is the same way. It doesn't even show up as a volume. I've currently got it in an external bay, still not being recognized by anything.

Will have a look at prices for professional data recovery. What really bites is that it blew up one week (to the day) after the three month warranty expired.

[Confector de Caeli]

Yeah, I am sorry to say that it looks like the way you're going to have to go. But just remember that professional data recovery can take weeks. In terms of cost, it can be priced anywhere from $700 to $2500.