Retrieval of data from bad Maxtor (Lacie)

[the_maso]

I know I'm not alone, but my Lacie 250GB has crapped itself - it's FAT32, single partition and had about 190GB of music and camcorder video files. It's not a boot disk, only supplementary storage.

I did a defrag as recommended by XP and afterwards, although the drive (H:/) appears on the directory tree, all directories under it not there. An attempt to browse gives a "Drive is not formatted - do you want to format" error.

Partition Magic 8.0 returns #45 CRC error.
MBRFIX returns Error 1005: The volume does not contain a valid file system...
GetBackData returns Bad Sector handling (Error reading LBA) errors on multiple sectors (Unknown Error 23)
Easy Recovery Pro takes for ever to do a raw scan (after 24 hours estimated another 4000+ hours to go) with multiple errors, although some files found(with bad filenames).

Anyway - there's a problem! I'm convinced the data's still there and it would be a tragedy if I lost it. Short of shelling out $$$$ for professional recovery, can anyone guess at a fix...?

Please?

 

[muckshifter]

Anyway - there's a problem! I'm convinced the data's still there and it would be a tragedy if I lost it. Short of shelling out $$$$ for professional recovery, can anyone guess at a fix...?

Please?

Take the drive out of the PC ... or you will risk more corruption ... and I'm afraid to say, you will need to part with money to get your data back ... if the company you use are good enough that is.

 

[the_maso]

Thanks - it's USB, so I can just unplug it anytime. I was hoping I might be able to extract and fix at home - it's a bloody crime that I can't hold anyone accountable for shoddy hardware.

Any recommendations?

 

[Anon_F]

On the right hand side of this page is an advert for "Disklabs Data Recovery" under sponsors.

 

[muckshifter]

Thanks - it's USB, so I can just unplug it anytime. I was hoping I might be able to extract and fix at home - it's a bloody crime that I can't hold anyone accountable for shoddy hardware.

Any recommendations?

You could try to recover the data with the getdataback, http://www.webattack.com/screenshots/getbacknt.htm.
It seems that the MBR might have been corrupted on this drive. (Use with caution) fdisk /mbr might fix it but it might also make the situation worse.

The partition table might have been screwed up or corrupted on this system as well, use the getdataback to get as much of your data off the drive prior to attempting any other measures.

 

[the_maso]

Thanks Muck..

Thanks so much for your assistance - much appreciated. I'm running getbackdata again, but I reckon it'll still be whirring away in the morning. I tried a util called MBRFIX and I reckon the MBR might be OK, but not really sure. How do I run fdisk in XP? (where is it located?).

I reckon the partition table is buggered. Partitionmagic has shown an anomoly: -

On the partition and errors summary...
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 0 80 0 1 1 0C 30514 254 63 63 490223412

On the disk geometry...
No Name 0 0 80 0 1 1 0C 1023 254 63 63 490,223,412

Dunno what this means tho!

 

[floppybootstomp]

Just by way of interest, I had a 120Gb PATA Western Digital Hard Disk crap out on me over the weekend.

It was being used for storage alongside a 240Gb main drive (2 x WD 120Gb SATA drives in RAID 0).

It started making those telltale whirring and clicking noises, so made two partitions in main drive of 120Gb each and transferred all data over to new partition.

The drive would only function though if I kept it hanging out of the case and on it's side, I think it was overheating.

And I've now burnt the majority of that 110Gb worth of data to DVD. I had WAV files; mp3 files; photos and movie footage stored there.

The drive was manufactured on 18th July, 2003, I'll have to check out what warranty Western Digital offer.

 

[muckshifter]

Sorry, old habits die hard ... run Recovery Console from the XP CD ... When you are logged on, you can run FIXMBR command to fix MBR.

However, I'm not sure that will work as I have never had to try it on a non-boot disk and I don't have anything to test with. It should 'fix' if it can, but I'm just guessing here.

If you have 'bad blocks/sectors at the boot record then all this could be a waste of time.

Try the hard drive manufacturers for a "tools" disk ... some are quite good at detecting and fixing 'errors', at this stage of the 'game' anything is worth a try ... but, you risk loosing everything the more you "play" with the drive.

Sorry to add, nothing will run forever, and if your data is important, at least back it up to a CD. We have all learned this the hard way.

 

[muckshifter]

I reckon the partition table is buggered. Partitionmagic has shown an anomoly: -

On the partition and errors summary...
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 0 80 0 1 1 0C 30514 254 63 63 490223412

On the disk geometry...
No Name 0 0 80 0 1 1 0C 1023 254 63 63 490,223,412

Dunno what this means tho!

CHS ...Cylinder/Head/Sector addressing.
Cylinder -- how far in or out the drive heads are positioned.
Head -- which one of the heads is in use.
Sector -- which segment of the disk is accessed, as it rotates underneath the selected drive head.

We won't go any further with this ... as I tend to get lost also.