Storage forum: unreadable sectors

The web site grc.com has an application that has been known to pull rabbits out of hats as well bring back all but dead hard drives.If you are interested,the application is called Spinrite6 and it can be had at grc.com along with much much more credible information as to its reputation as one of the if not the very best hard drive utility available.It will cost for the first time purchaser $89.00 but it gets better over time.Read up because there are stories at the site that will make your decision to purchase less lonesome.Good Luck!

I meant what I said,"You can get your money back at the door"

Spinrite has a great reputation. It only works on internal drives, from a floppy, so give it a shot for the laptop. On an external drive with problems, take the drive out of its container, hook it up to a desk top as a second (slave) drive, and again try spinrite on it. Spinrite does a thorough job, and it may take as much as 24 hours, be patient. If the drive doesn't spin, or if your system does not see the drive, you may consider using the drive as a door stop, unless the data is valuable and you have plenty of cash.

I took the respondants advise and bought the Spinrite program. The problem is, I can't even get it to work. I had over 7,000 MP3 and family photo's on my hard drive and now I have nothing. I downloaded my entire music CD and personal family photos into my computer before moving from Illinois to California, and now I have nothing.

I must admit, I'm not the most computer savy guy out there, but I tried to use this program, followed what I thought were the instructions by hitting thr F2 or delete key during startup, and nothing happened. I guess I just wasted $80 of my hard earned money. If I could send this damn program back to spinrite I would. Can anyone give me step by step instructions on what to do? I'm about at my wits end trying to get this consumer unfriendly program to work.

Thanks,
Terry

First rule of hard drive recovery - STOP! and think.

If the drive is still spinning, not making strange noises and most of the drive seems to be accessible, backup your data. Then give SpinRite a chance.

If the drive is still spinning and you've lost access to the drive:
1. Check your BIOS settings to see if the system sees your drive
2. Start SpinRite (it brings its own OS and runs from a floppy). Its preliminary diagnostics may give you some hints as to what went wrong such as 'bad MBR' or 'overwritten sector 0'. Another program with a startup diagnostic is PartitionMagic that can help show what your system sees. If these don't get on your way to a good answer, try the reasoning in the next step.

If the last notice from the drive was bad "noises" or rapidly narrowing access, shutdown the system and unplug the drive. Think back to what data is on the drive, when you last backed it up, how important it may be and how hard it may be to reproduce. There are data recovery companies that can in most cases rebuild the drive to last long enough to get the data from it. Costs start at $600. and go up depending on how complete a recovery you need, the type drive involved and the time you are willing to wait.
Note: the more you play with the drive after it starts to fail mechanically, the less likely you are to get your data back.

In any case, 2 new drives failing in one year is way out of norm today. Since one drive was an external drive you may want to check for a bad AC power source, something that might be overheating the area or something physically jarring the equipment (e.g., enthusiastic vacuuming)

In any case, better luck in the future.

Use them for emergencies ONLY. Many of them can perform miracles out of seemingly bad hd crashes, but they are hella expensive. It certainly varies per company, but the ones i called costed $800 minimum and even up to $8,000 just for a simple data recovery on a 120GB hd gone wrong. Most ppl who use these services will be corporations, enterprises, or smaller groups who have mission critical info (banking, financials, blueprints, etc.), and who obviously were lax with their backups. I'd gander many large businesses will have their own backup solutions to avoid needing these emergency data recovery services should hardirves crash.

It's your $$, and it looks like you're fine w/o it since u opted to backup regularily. Try the <$100 suggestions if you still wanna try to recover some data.

i know this thread is old, but for whoever finds it, like vbrauner said, id check the western digital link, http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.asp?lang=en&selregion=americas, and pick a company close to you. i went with http://www.flashbackdata.com since theyre in the neighborhood; worked out well.