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Community Newsletter: Q&A: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive?
- 10/10/08 3:51 PM
Corrupt hard drive
by fmazzola - 10/4/08 10:30 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I am not an expert but I had a similar problem, and of course, my data was not backed up! I was on the phone with multiple tech support people from Dell, which was a frustrating experience. They even came and changed the motherboard in my computer which, as I knew, would not fix the problem. Then I went to the Besty Buy geek squad and they told me that I could pay up to $800 to have data recovered from the drive but I would probably lose a lot of it. I persisted with online searches, sites such as this one, and finally solved the problem. This worked for me and it may work for you. First, do you get that horrid blue screen? If so, there are codes that you can look up to determine where the problem is. Second, boot the computer and get into the DOS prompt and run CHKDSK on the bad drive. This will check the boot sectors and fix them if neccessary. They may not work for you, but it's worth a try. If you have Windows XP you cannot a DOS prompt since it doesn't run on a DOS platform. There is a progam that you can download to access the NTFS disk through DOS. http://www.bootdisk.com/ntfs.htm. Before you do this you may want to get other responses because I am not an expert, but my drive is fine and it's been about a year. If you are running Vista, I have no idea. Good luck!
Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive
by sws307aa - 10/4/08 10:37 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This has happened to me in the past with a laptop. After I installed a new hard drive and re-installed the OS, I purchased a external hard drive enclosure. I mounted the defective hard drive in the enclosure and hooked it up to the laptop via USB port. The laptop recognized the USB port drive and I proceeded to swap the information I wanted to keep.
You did not state whether it was a laptop or desktop machine. I have purchased two (2) different enclosures: NexStar 2.5" Ide to USB 2.0 ($14.99)and PowerSpec 2.5" Ide to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure ($12.99). They both work identically (only one is needed). If you have a desktop, you may want to check if there is an enclosure for a 3.5" hard drive.
This happened to me a few years ago.
by jsabini - 10/4/08 10:47 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I found a company based in Wisconsin that recovered my data at a very reasonable price. Since then, I have noticed other companies have surfaced that do the same thing - all in the $250-$300 range, which is quite a bit less than the orginal quotes I received in the $1000+ range back in 2005. I used gillware.com and was very pleased. I recommend them. Good luck.
...but sometimes the drive is not so bad...
by fmazzola - 10/4/08 11:05 AM In reply to: This happened to me a few years ago. by jsabiniIn my case, a simple fix to the boot sector completely resurrected the drive. It was bootable and all my files and directories were intact. Data recovery takes pieces of files from all over the drive and puts them back together (like Humptey Dumptey). All that may not be necessary.
Some Tips
by publeo - 10/4/08 11:44 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I also experienced the same. The system message said that my hard drive is unreadable, on another instance corrupt and should consider re-installing my disk manager.
Finding it unbelievable, my computer run very slowly afterward,I suspected it was caused by a virus.
What i did that resulted to positive outcome was as follows:
1. I installed an old hard disk (XP2 system) as primary master in the primary cable
2. I installed the defective hard disk (XP 2 System) as slave in a separate cable as primary slave.
3. I replaced the power supply with an older but not defective power supply.
4. After which the defective drive was seen already.
5. All files are in-tact but a slight change was made by the virus in the disk management files settings of DMA.
6 All files are in-tact and i was able to make a back-up.
7 I reformatted the defective drive into 2 drive, One for system and and the other for work files.
There are a lot of virus that can escape protection software's ability to detect. May be because most software defend on large database of definition files which to me is an overhead due to delay of update and slow execution. There are also protection software that do not provide option to protect drives other than the main drive. Very few software are capable of protecting U S B which i consider most vulnerable as virus entry point. No software is capable of protecting from all threats and viruses, I have not known anyone yet.
As for me, I installed two protection software, "Threatfire" is one the other is "Antivir" I find the two compatible and worthy of evaluation and satisfactory so far, there are lot good anti-virus software to choose from, but you should not rely on one alone and should not exceed more than two because of speed consideration. Special care must be taken during installation to determine compatibility. This is not for advertisement but i am speaking based on result of personal evaluation and experience.
I am not suggesting to you to do the same as what I did, but it may help you diagnose the problem and find appropriate solution.
Since you are a student you may find software solutions in http://www.dl4all.com/ not guaranteed
Good luck
corrupt hard drive...
by deaths_little_helper - 10/4/08 12:16 PM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You can try to use the disk managment tool in Microsoft, to see the drive, and maybe change the drive letter (something else may be trying to use the automaticly assigned letter) that's the most cost effective first step I can think of. If that fails, you may want to try a $25 device that allows you to plug your hard drive into a USB port, like an external drive, but without the expinsive case...this may or may not work, depending on what caused the corruption in the first place...but it's a start
GetDataBack -best tool I have found.
by artandy - 10/4/08 1:05 PM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
It has worked when nothing else would -- $69 for FAT ($79 for NTFS) with free updates for life. Take a look
Recover data from a corrupt hard drive
by grohskopf - 10/4/08 1:17 PM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have used a product called "SPINRITE" to recover some marginally defective hard drives. The product is written by Gibson Research and the website is http://grc.com/default.htm. I think that the product sells for around $60.00. I ran SPINRITE for 4 hours against one drive and recovered it successfully.
Arnold Grohskopf
8-Ball says: "Not looking to good"
by pyrdek - 10/4/08 1:19 PM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Having replaced several hard drives in recent weeks, my first thought is that you are out of luck. This is especially true if you have already hit the drive with one or more of the "recovery" programs you mentioned and they did work. Sometimes they work and or other times they will make the disk entirely unrecoverable (if it ever even was recoverable).
There are some failures that even the VERY EXPENSIVE data recovery centers can not recover. I had one person that had their PhD thesis on a hard rive that failed. She sent it to a California based recovery service. Their estimated cost, prior to seeing the drive, was $1,700. After they received it and did the preliminary test, they returned it as totally non-recoverable. At least they didn't charge her very much for the inspection. The only thing I could do was install a replacement (empty) drive and start over.
Have you taken a look at the BIOS (PC systems) to see if the disk is even recognized as being present? You would have to boot up and then hit the key specified by the manufacturer (Delete, Escape, Tab, one of the "F"unction keys or perhaps some combination) prior to the Windows program starting. Apple will usually show the presence of a disk if you check the Systems Profile utility when booted from a CD or different hard drive than the failed one.
If the disk does not even appear in Bios or Profile, you are probably dead in the water! The lack of any recognition will make it virtually impossible for the recovery software to even find the disk.
If Bios or Profile does show the disk, at least some of the communications to and from the system's data bus are working. You MIGHT be able to find some data. Disk recovery, usually the first try is the only good effort, might work. If it starts its processing but then fails, you may have just lost most everything.
If the Master Boot Record (the very first file the hard drive will try to read) is just corrupted, you might be able to rebuild it using a disk editor. This is not for the faint of heart or inexperienced user since you will be working with hexadecimal notation and one wrong move can really screw things up. The MBR tells the disk software where to begin looking for the next file called for. If the disk has a hardware failure somewhere in its read or write electronics, you are pretty much dead. A small example of what a MBR looks like is copied from Wikipedia and shown below.
Absolute sector 0 (cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0000 EB 48 90 D0 BC 00 7C FB 50 07 50 1F FC BE 1B 7C .H....|.P.P....|
0010 BF 1B 06 50 57 B9 E5 01 F3 A4 CB BE BE 07 B1 04 ...PW...........
0020 38 2C 7C 09 75 15 83 C6 10 E2 F5 CD 18 8B 14 8B 8,|.u...........
0030 EE 83 C6 10 49 74 16 38 2C 74 F6 BE 10 07 03 02 ....It.8,t......
0040 80 00 00 80 DF 0A 93 01 00 08 FA EA 50 7C 00 00 ............P|..
0050 31 C0 8E D8 8E D0 BC 00 20 FB A0 40 7C 3C FF 74 1....... ..@|<.t
The next set of files looked for are the partition tables. Again, if these are corrupt or missing, the hard drive will not be able to find your file.
Once the MBR has been read correctly, the drive starts looking for the track and sector (portion of the called track) that contains the next bits of data called for. If the "Roadmap" showing where the next file is located is missing or wrong, a disk editor might be able to write the correct data IF YOU KNOW WHERE THE NEXT TRACK AND SECTOR IS. This is usually impossible if there are many tracks. At the end of the data for the first track is information to get to the next track. With one file, say a .DOC file for example, spanning many many tracks and sectors, this may or may not be possible. If there has been writing activity on any of the tracks you need, you have lost pretty much everything since the needed information to locate the next track you need no longer exists.
Sorry to give you such a "Doom & Gloom" scenario but that is pretty much the way it is.
My favorite saying comes to mind. "There are two types of computer users. Those who know what the term 'Backup' means and do and those, who at some point it time, wish they did!" I am afraid that you are probably in the second group.
Forgot to add a word to the "8-Ball" post
by pyrdek - 10/4/08 1:31 PM In reply to: 8-Ball says: "Not looking to good" by pyrdek"Having replaced several hard drives in recent weeks, my first thought is that you are out of luck. This is especially true if you have already hit the drive with one or more of the "recovery" programs you mentioned and they did NOT work. Sometimes they work and or other times they will make the disk entirely unrecoverable (if it ever even was recoverable)." (ADDED "NOT")
Amazing how one word left out can change the meaning.
Not necessarily true
by vattan2005 - 10/11/08 1:38 PM In reply to: Forgot to add a word to the "8-Ball" post by pyrdekMy USB key became unreadable. I used 2 to 3 various types of software before, finally, one did the trick.
I enjoy a challenge
by tj_1of1 - 10/12/08 9:29 PM In reply to: 8-Ball says: "Not looking to good" by pyrdekIf you still have the drive and would like me to try I would be happy to. My charge for trying is shipping both ways nothing more. If I recover the drive or at least the PHD $100. If the drive will still spin I should be able to get it does not matter if the computer see the drive or not. I have never not been able to get dat from a drive that would spin. The worst I have ever done was to only recover parts of the drive. The drive was grinding and making all kind of noises. I was able to copy the whole drive but some of the files were corupt and would not open.
TJ
Do You Like A Challenge
by inventivemind - 1/9/09 1:56 PM In reply to: I enjoy a challenge by tj_1of1how does one contact the guy who 'likes a challenge' ever think people might need to know that?
Corrupt Hard Drive
by Zouch - 10/10/08 1:25 PM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Chuck,
Tis doesn't look good. But from your description, since the failed drive would appear to be accessible, albeit unreadable, that would suggest that the damage is logical, rather than physical, such as a head crash. Most likely the MFT or FAT are corrupted (the tables that point to the files on the disk). The damage could have been done if the machine suffered a power drop or power spike, essentially, the drive drops power, a safety mechanism retracts the heads but they spill a few random bits over the drive as they retract. Or it may have been updating the FAT when a power event occurred. There are many possibilities.
This is when you realise that frequent backups are essential but we all forget to keep them up to date - mea culpa!
What can you do? Well, don't do anything that might write to the disk, though it may be too late for that. The professional data recovery companies are expensive and so the data has to be very valuable to you to use them and, as you say, beyond the means of most students. That doesn't mean you should rule them out completely, though. I've had some success with Kroll-Ontrack (look them up on the web for your location). Here in the UK, they have a help desk that we can call and discuss our problem with a technician for the cost of the phone call. They won't restore your data for that but they can suggest the options available to you - naturally, usually using their services! But if they say the data is likely unrecoverable, then it probably is. They also have (or had, I've not needed them for 18 months) a free downloadable analyser program that will scan the disk in question and, where possible, document the problems found and the likely chance of recovery.
You've tried some of the data recovery tools with no real success so far. You might want to try Partition Table Doctor http://www.ptdd.com/. Rather than look at the files, it works at the level of the control tables on the disk, MBR, Boot Sector, FAT, etc. They also used to have a free download of a scanner, which will scan the disk and highlight any errors but won't fix it unless you buy the product. But remember, this will only fix disk control table problems- if that rebuilds the file tables, all well and good but it may not. They are in the Far East, so some of their English is "imaginative"!
One other suggestion that I've used on corrupt disks is to boot a Knoppix Linux CD and see if it can find the files you are looking for. Knoppix is free for download and you can burn a bootable CD from the ISO file. On booting, Knoppix will mount any hard drives it finds as read only and clicking on the drive icon will open the drive directory. If there are any recognisable files, you can copy them to a USB key and then copy them back to your Windows system later. Linux identifies files by content, rather than filetype and can sometimes rescue files lost to a Windows system. It's a bit of a long shot, though.
Doubtless other members will have their favourite tools to recommend. Good luck!
BOOT SECTOR ERRORS
by STEVERI - 10/13/08 7:06 AM In reply to: Corrupt Hard Drive by ZouchFor me it is usually a boot sector error that the hard drive fails on. Oddly enough this has happened to me 3 times in the last 10 months. I put the old C: drive on as a slave and all 3 times the drive information other than the boot sector was readable and I keep the drive as a slave.
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