Data Recovery From Bad Hd

[nikster]

My laptop HD fried last week - it was so bad the computer would not detect the drive at all for the most part.

I had installed a 200GB HD in my MacBook Pro so I thought maybe some cable came loose. But after the Apple center replaced the HD with the original I still had (free of charge - amazing sometimes!), I put the 200GB HD in an external enclosure and it turns out the HD is just bad. Bad sectors, bad blocks, whatever.

Data Rescue ran for 20 minutes, then estimated there were about 400 hours remaining. At the speed it was going, I estimated it to run about 660 hours, actually. 27 days! And that was only after a night in the deep freezer.

Does anyone know of a professional data recovery service in Chiang Mai or BKK? I have a backup but it's 3 weeks old (bad I know) and I want to recover a handful of documents from the drive. Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that the drive has 2 partitions, and the one I want to recover is the Mac partition, formatted with HFS+.

BTW I am not recommending the Hitachi 7K200 drive anymore, obviously. Live fast, die young seems to be its motto - this thing was only 4 months old.

[Guest Reimar]

I send you an PM!

[Guest Reimar]

send you one more PM!

[nikster]

Thanks for that Reimar. I installed HD Restore and tried it but maybe my HD is too bad to do this. I let it run for only about 8 minutes, in this time it had processed 4 sectors, and found all of them bad. The HD contains 40 million sectors so at that speed that would take... a long time

I am going to give it to some shop in CM, would appreciate if somebody knows a professional data recovery shop.

I found one guy willing to do it, he said it would take a week. But it looked like all he would do is muck around with it in the same way I had. It could work but I know there are professional shops in the US that do this kind of thing.

The Data Rescue Quick check was the most successful so far, it got about 30% into the drive. Then it got stuck and provided ever-increasing time estimated to completion - it was at 15 hours to go when i stopped it.

I haven't actually lost very much data, despite not backing up for 3 weeks. I had left my photos on the phone/camera after syncing so all the recent ones are still there. I didn't add music during that time. Email is all on the servers, of course. The only thing that's missing are some work log files that could not be replaced. I am kind of lucky that all my actual work is on servers...

Edited November 7, 2007 by nikster

[ungcas]

At this point it doesn't sound like conventional methods are going to work.

Sounds like the drive has some physical damage to it. You probabably need a professional, like someone who has access to a Class 100 Clean room to recover the data on that drive.

I'm not sure where to find those in thailand and they cost a lot. So depending on what you want to recover on that drive, it may or may not be worth it.

[nikster]

I am thinking its something about the mechanics. Like spinning too slow or something like that. The surprising thing was that this happened without warning and seemingly at random. I didn't drop the machine. I was sitting there working away and all is happy, the next moment all programs freeze completely and the HD is dead.

[Guest Reimar]

Thanks for that Reimar. I installed HD Restore and tried it but maybe my HD is too bad to do this. I let it run for only about 8 minutes, in this time it had processed 4 sectors, and found all of them bad. The HD contains 40 million sectors so at that speed that would take... a long time

I am going to give it to some shop in CM, would appreciate if somebody knows a professional data recovery shop.

I found one guy willing to do it, he said it would take a week. But it looked like all he would do is muck around with it in the same way I had. It could work but I know there are professional shops in the US that do this kind of thing.

The Data Rescue Quick check was the most successful so far, it got about 30% into the drive. Then it got stuck and provided ever-increasing time estimated to completion - it was at 15 hours to go when i stopped it.

I haven't actually lost very much data, despite not backing up for 3 weeks. I had left my photos on the phone/camera after syncing so all the recent ones are still there. I didn't add music during that time. Email is all on the servers, of course. The only thing that's missing are some work log files that could not be replaced. I am kind of lucky that all my actual work is on servers...

Nikster:

The prog is slow while "repairing" bad sectors, otherwise on "good" sectors it need for 1 MB max 1 second. You'll see the result on screen directly how many sectors are recovered.

I do believe that you'll loose all of your data if you give the HDD to the Guy you wrote about! I would let run the prog if I'm you!But it's your decission.

Cheers.

[jackk]

What about them?

http://www.savemydrive.com/contact.html

http://www.ibas.com.sg/contact

First one is in BKK (Sukhumvit 24), second one in SG but have contact address in BKK as well.

Never tried, but they were in my bookmarks, just in case....

[think_too_mut]

What about them?

http://www.savemydrive.com/contact.html

http://www.ibas.com.sg/contact

First one is in BKK (Sukhumvit 24), second one in SG but have contact address in BKK as well.

Never tried, but they were in my bookmarks, just in case....

How about this:

You need to know that a hardware disk failure warrants a hardware fix and no amount, or type. of recovery software will be of any help at this stage. In fact, by attempting your own recovery, most often, it results in irreversible data loss.

The site basically says - they can recover data in all cases except when they can't.

"Complex data base recovery" - BS, it is impossible to recover it. Unless they call MS Access a database.

[cdnvic]

I have yet to have a failed drive (other than a physically damaged one) that Spinrite couldn't recover. If it's a Mac drive it needs to be connected to a PC to work though.

http://www.grc.com/

*edit* I personally have not used it on a Mac drive.

Edited November 8, 2007 by cdnvic

[nikster]

Thanks cdvic, I will try that.

I like the SpinRite license - it's $89 which is steep, but it comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. So if it doesn't work, I will ask the money back. If it works, $89 is well worth it. Cool.

I have a feeling that that's the best any shop could do too, except if they are the professional people with the clean room ($$$$).

Do you have any experience on how fast this program works? I have a 200GB HD with apparently significant damage...

[cdnvic]

I'd hope it could be done overnight. Did an 80gb drive in about 7 hrs once that wouldn't even boot.

[raro]

Just tried Spinrite for the first time with a HDD that died a while ago, but no avail. Spintrite did not detect the drive whatsoever.

The drive fell down (while NOT running) and since it makes only some click-click noises. Any idea?

[cdnvic]

The drive fell down (while NOT running) and since it makes only some click-click noises. Any idea?

It's broken, for good.

[nikster]

My drive is beyond repair as well, sadly. SpinRite was able to correct most sectors it processed but it took so long the estimated time to finish was 15,000 hours. It had done less than 0,0001 % of the drive in 24 hours.

I tried several different areas of the drive, freezing, etc, it was the same everywhere.

Edited November 11, 2007 by nikster

[A_Traveller]

Sorry to hear the stories. As I mentioned elsewhere herein, the problems seem to be exacerbated, not by heat as many expect, but the contaminated {especially particulate} atmosphere. These failures are often irreparable without a clean room rebuild, which is possible but very expensive.

Regards

[Khun Bob]

Copy the drive ignoring errors onto another similar or equal medium. Then recover what you can from the copy. Get familiar with disk editors and what has changed in the 3 week interim period, or what critical data must be recovered.

Giving your drive to a non-professional service will be an expensive and elightening (read pointless) experience !

[pctools]

You should consult Stellar Information, they are capable of recovering data from virtually any kind of data loss either due to spindle stops spinning, head crashes or failure in the logic circuit board. They conduct data recovery services in Class 100 Clean Room. Stellar's indigenously developed technology of Head Transplant ensures maximum recovery success rate irrespective of the cause of failure.

For more information about data recovery services visit: http://www.stellarinfo.com/data_recovery_services.htm

[Guest Reimar]

My drive is beyond repair as well, sadly. SpinRite was able to correct most sectors it processed but it took so long the estimated time to finish was 15,000 hours. It had done less than 0,0001 % of the drive in 24 hours.

I tried several different areas of the drive, freezing, etc, it was the same everywhere.

Just "repaired" one of my Server HDD's again which tooks 14 hour with HD Regenerator 1.51. Just for to compare I was using Spinrite 6 before HD Regenerator and Spinrite wasn't able even to start the HDD I was getting the Messages: I/O Disk Error! But HD Regenerator after work fine!

I had most of the "broken" HDD's repaired with HD Regenerator in the past with an quote good to bad: 90 to 10!