Recover Data From Bad HD

[ColTom2]

Hi:

I have a Gateway Laptop model 400DS4 with apparently a bad Toshiba HDD2183
DMA/ATA-100 (60GB) HD. It tries to boot and but says Operating System not
found. Inserted Spinrite and it indicated HD was empty or no HD found and of
course I could go no further with it.

Removed HD and used an USB to SATA cable adapter and then connected to a
operational Toshiba laptop and booted and it found remote storage device I
suppose temporarily with the pop up in the Taskbar. However, when I opened
My Computer no additional drives are shown.

The HD initially makes an odd spinning noise, but then settles down to
what I suppose is normal noise....if any at all because I am so hard of
hearing.

If I open Safely Remove Hardware it shows a Mass Storage Device; however,
like I said no additional drive ever appears in My Computer so I am now at a
total lost in trying to recover any data. With the adapter installed there
are 4 pins without a Jumper installed. I don't know if I need a Jumper
installed on the pins or even if that would make a difference, as I can't
find anything about this on the web.

Any help and/or recommendations will greatly be appreciated.

Thanks,

ColTom2

 

[Bob Harris]

You might still have a chance of recovering some data, but at a price.

There are professional recovery services that can remove the magnetic
platters from a hard drive and install them in a new drive. If the platter
are physically OK, and the problem was the electronics inside the hard drive
(e.g., the controller, the heads, or the motor), then recovery of the data
may be possible.

Note that honest recovery services usually charge little or nothing to
assess whether recover is possible. However, they charge hundreds or even
over a thousand dollars to actually recover the files.

Try a Google search on "data recovery". Note that from the symptoms, no
software-based program will solve your problem. You will need to ship the
hard drive to a recovery company.

This is an example one such company. (Note that I have not needed to use
any of these, so I can not recommend any one in particular.)

http://www.diskdoctors.com/hard-drive-recovery.asp

Note their price range is med-high, but that diagnosis is free, and there is
no charge is no recovery is possible:

Single Hard Drive: The recovery cost for a single hard disk drive can run a
wide range (anything from $350 to $3000 depending upon the nature of
problem). It is not possible for us to provide an exact recovery cost
without diagnosing the data storage media. The best thing would be bringing
or shipping the problem drive to our lab. We will perform a free evaluation
of your device and give you an exact dollar quote based on the challenge on
hand. The diagnosis process takes 2-6 hours and is performed as soon as we
receive the faulty data storage media. So, we prefer to offer free diagnosis
(a saving of $150) before we give you a no-obligation firm recovery quote.
At that time, you can decide whether to go ahead with the recovery process
or decline it. Upon your quote approval, we will try to fix the drive
problems, recover the data, and a list of files and directories of recovered
data will be emailed to you for verification. The recovery cost is
independent of the size of recovered data. No recovery results in zero
charge except return shipping.

Finally, to avoid ever getting in this situation in the future, please do
yourself a favor and look into the general subject of data backup At least
make copies of personal files on a USB drive, or CDs/DVDs, or similar.
Maybe even learn how to make an image of the hard drive, which is great as a
means to recover a corrupted file system, virus-infected PC, or even just a
bad program update (including XP updates). Modern imaging software is very
easy to use, as is writing CDs/DVDs, and copying personal files to USB
devices is merely point & click.

 

[Twayne]

Hi:

I have a Gateway Laptop model 400DS4 with apparently a bad Toshiba
HDD2183 DMA/ATA-100 (60GB) HD. It tries to boot and but says
Operating System not found. Inserted Spinrite and it indicated HD was
empty or no HD found and of course I could go no further with it.

Removed HD and used an USB to SATA cable adapter and then connected
to a operational Toshiba laptop and booted and it found remote
storage device I suppose temporarily with the pop up in the Taskbar.
However, when I opened My Computer no additional drives are shown.

The HD initially makes an odd spinning noise, but then settles down
to what I suppose is normal noise....if any at all because I am so
hard of hearing.

If I open Safely Remove Hardware it shows a Mass Storage Device;
however, like I said no additional drive ever appears in My Computer
so I am now at a total lost in trying to recover any data. With the
adapter installed there are 4 pins without a Jumper installed. I
don't know if I need a Jumper installed on the pins or even if that
would make a difference, as I can't find anything about this on the
web.

Any help and/or recommendations will greatly be appreciated.

Thanks,

ColTom2

That could be as simple as a botches MBR or worse than a barrel of
monkeys in a candy store, but there are some things you can try.

Can you get to Safe Mode?

You can use 'fixmbr' to correct a trashed MBR (Master Boot Record), but
you need the Recovery Console to do so. Here's a link that should help
you see if you can use it:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx?mfr=true
Specifically read the notes on that page.

Then after that, issue the bootfix command while still in the Recovery
Console.

If those are no help or you can't manage to get anywhere to accomplish
it (Safe Mode, etc):

I guess I'd go to the drive manufacturer's web site and get the jumper
labels and figure out what if any jumpers are needed. Not positive, but
I assume this is an IDE drive, so the jumper could be important.
If it's an IDE and you're plugging it into the second connector on
the same data cable as your boot drive, then you
a might have to set the boot drive jumper to Master, and
b set the "bad" drive's jumper to Slave.
There can be other combinations for the jumper though, which is why I
suggest going to the drive's web site and getting the tech support info
for your model of drive. I've always had Gateways and I suspect the
Master/Slave is the jumper arrangement you will want.

If you use a different IDE cable, all the same rules still apply. The
Main device on that cable will need to be jumpered Master most likely,
and then your problem drive as Slave.

If it's SATA drive then none of the above IDE applies: There is no
master/slave relation in SATA; each drive gets its own controller.

If the drive can't be kept running at all, then it's probably best to
try to find another computer and install it there as a slave and at
least get all your important data off it. Although it won't boot, it
might run fine as a non-bootable drive. In which case BTW, you could
then also run fixmbr and bootfix on it per the link above. Drives are
also numbered starting at 0: So the first drive is 0, the second drive
is 1, and so on. But not always - be sure you pay attention to how
they're numbered so you're sure you work on the correct drive.

Go thru as much of that as you can, and come back with the results.
Perhaps there will be some other things to try.
But your first and major target should be to get anything important on
the drive copied or backed up so you won't lose it.
It's always possible that it's past time to go looking for a new drive
to replace yours. Prices these days are very, very reasonable for
drives. If the drive is making anything but head-stuttering like sounds,
e.g. bearing noises, whatever, then it's almost certainly time to
replace it. I just remembered you indicated your'e hard of hearing, so
that might be a little hard to do. How about a friend or neighbor with
a computer to listen to it? Just a thought.
Hopefully you're "one of those" who backs up regularly and isn't too
worried about losing data<g>. Now would be a good time to jot that down
as your next task.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[Anteaus]

Worth a try with Knoppix, mounting it with ntfs-3g. I've known this to read
corrupted NTFS disks when Windows won't. If you mount readonly then there is
no possibility of further harm.

 

[Twayne]

I'll second that. But --- you need a known good drive installed
(external is best) to copy the data to.

Twayne`

 

[ColTom2]

Hi:

I was able to fully load Knoppix, but when I tried to mount the HD I got
an error notice indicating that it could not. It indicated 0% and would not
go any further.I tried a second time and it shut the computer down.

I needed to be able to copy My Document files and folders, but it now
seems an impossible chore without professional restoration assistance. The
cost is prohibitive.

Thanks for all the info,

ColTom2




Worth a try with Knoppix, mounting it with ntfs-3g. I've known this to read
corrupted NTFS disks when Windows won't. If you mount readonly then there is
no possibility of further harm.