HD crash, looking 4 recovery program

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MortimerInBlack
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HD crash, looking 4 recovery program

Post by MortimerInBlack »

Well my HD crashed a few days ago; i am wondering if any of u know a good (preferably free) program that can recover w/e may be left. Any advice is welcome 2.

Fortunately, i do have a few (slightly old) backups, but i did not know that HD's are guaranteed to crash sooner or later simply because of the technology.
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Commander Spleen
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Post by Commander Spleen »

Define 'crashed'. Does it still show up in the BIOS? Is it spinning up when the computer starts? If it's not working mechanically, then things become complicated.

I don't know any programs off the top of my head, since I've not recovered anything in such a manner, but I can speak to a colleague tomorrow and find out a few names.
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Post by Galaxieretter »

This is the EASIEST and best way to recover data from a screwed up Hard drive:
Remove the hard drive and change the pin on your current hard drive and set it from "Master" to "Slave." (NOT "Cable Select")

Then take your, old, second hard drive, make it "Master", format and install windows or whatever you use on it. WHAT?! You don't HAVE a second hard drive!?

Well then just remove the drive and put it in you second computer. Don't have a second computer? Well that sucks for you.

Most of the time when a hard drive "crashes" it's just the OS that gets screwed up. Many MANY times I have done this to find 99 - 75% of the data still intact. (And only a few files missing.) The hard drive usually doesn't get past 90% corrupted before the system becomes unbootable though so don't be too worried about loosing data.

Now, keep in mind there is a difference between hard drive CRASH and a hard drive FAILURE. A hard drive FAILURE is MUCH worse, as that usually leads to a totally corrupted hard drive and the inability to use the hard drive again. (I've had this happen only a few times. It SUCKS!) It could be anything from a mechanical failure to well... mechanical failure. If your hard drive failed... you're screwed. Usually a broken hard drive does weird things like spin up and never slow down. Or it will continually try to read and re-read the same spot over and over until it just shuts off. (Or overheats.)

As a LAST CHANCE resort you could always try to open up the HD case, remove the spindles and put them back in another hard drive of the same make and modle... but good luck with that. :lol

Anyway, that's just some personal experience advice from me. I'm not a professional, I just know what works. Also, I can't recommend doing this, but I read by someone (in a book) that FREEZING your hard drive might get it working long enough to recover data from it. I NEVER tried that though so... take it as is.*

*Galaxieretter will not be responsible for you freezing your hard drive.
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Genius314
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Post by Genius314 »

This reminds me to back up my data... right now.

(Heh, my back up HD is actually larger than my regular one. 80GB and 40)
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Post by KeenRush »

I still have no back-ups and I have everything on this harddrive... :bloody Well, I'd need some portable garg for that, I don't want to start burning cds with my nearly broken drive. :barf I guess I'll just wait and get wiser when I lose all my stuff again. 8)
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Flaose
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Post by Flaose »

I had a hard drive go on my about twice in two weeks. I still don't know what its problem was, because it's working fine now as a slave.

Computers are stupid.
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entropicdecay
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Post by entropicdecay »

I have some of the stuff from my other computer backed up, but it's in some weird format I don't quite understand because of the program I used to make the backup.
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Post by Captain Winters »

I bought a nice new backup hard drive, and then the old one's OS failed. It was the easiest recovery ever. I just booted off the backup HDD, copied off the 40GB old one onto the 250GB one, and away I go!
Of course, now my backup and non-backup are on the same hard drive, but I have a home network. I can always dump all my data onto someone else's computer!
And it is hard to get 250GB of data onto a 40GB-sized backup. Isn't it strange how you never have trouble filling up more space even if you thought you'd never ever need that much? I thought 4GB was tons, then 10GB, 40GB, and now 250GB. It never is though...
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Post by Malvineous »

I always thought a hard drive crash and a failure were the same thing. The first major hard drive crash I had was pretty obvious, because it sounded like there was a little man inside the drive using a jackhammer on it...

Also freezing the drive was only supposed to help with the particular issue experienced by the IBM Deskstar (a.k.a. "Deathstar") series of disks. I tried it for a friend, but it didn't work.

I don't know if you've ever tried removing the platters from a hard drive, but you'd be almost guaranteed to kill the heads if you try it, not to mention scratching the platters. If the problem is with the drive electronics, a far safer method is to just replace the drive's circuit board with one from a similar model. In fact, most disk recovery places have a selection of controller boards for this very purpose.

Of course if you can read the drive even though you can't boot from it, it just means the disk has become corrupted, IMHO it's not even close to a crash if you can't *hear* it ;-)
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MortimerInBlack
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Post by MortimerInBlack »

i did not have a physical failure, near as i can tell, cuz u can still go into it and read the corrupted data. Yes i figured that most crashes corrupt the OS and not your personal stuff, so i am very interested in recovery attempts.

but i don't wanna format the crashed hd, i was under the impression that that wipes everything.
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Post by Galaxieretter »

Yes, formatting your drive WILL erase all data on it. Like I suggested, just stick it in another computer and copy it over.
Captain Winters wrote:Isn't it strange how you never have trouble filling up more space even if you thought you'd never ever need that much? I thought 4GB was tons, then 10GB, 40GB, and now 250GB. It never is though...
I actually don't need more than 250 GB at MOST. I have a 40 gig and that's too small for my purpouses but combined with an 80 gig that's WAY more than enough storage data for me. Even with 300 DPI scans and my raw PSD (Photoshop) files my entire digital art archive for the past 3 years could fit on a DVD.

I don't see HOW someone can need more than 250 GB of storage as of NOW unless you are doing some serious video editing or saving some HUGE images. (Like working with BMP or something.) Maybe if you made ISO's of the 150+ computer games you own. Even 140 Gigabytes is a lot... well unless...

... but that's a LOT of porn.
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Post by Flaose »

Heh.

I think hard drives are like roads...no much how much space is made, it always gets filled up. Heck, I've got 550 GB on their way to being filled...
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Post by KeenRush »

Yeah, it's strange... Before I had everything for years in 4 gigs or so, now my program folder that consist of freeware programs alone is 1.5 gigs! I can't understand how it can take so much space.
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Post by Genius314 »

That's weird. I've only filled up about half of my 40 gig drive. And the only thing I'm using the 80 for is backups and a few games. I'm really not sure why I'm not filling anything up. It's been around the same size for about 2 years... and I've added plenty of files since then...
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Post by Captain Winters »

Galaxieretter wrote:Yes, formatting your drive WILL erase all data on it. Like I suggested, just stick it in another computer and copy it over.
Captain Winters wrote:Isn't it strange how you never have trouble filling up more space even if you thought you'd never ever need that much? I thought 4GB was tons, then 10GB, 40GB, and now 250GB. It never is though...
I actually don't need more than 250 GB at MOST. I have a 40 gig and that's too small for my purpouses but combined with an 80 gig that's WAY more than enough storage data for me. Even with 300 DPI scans and my raw PSD (Photoshop) files my entire digital art archive for the past 3 years could fit on a DVD.

I don't see HOW someone can need more than 250 GB of storage as of NOW unless you are doing some serious video editing or saving some HUGE images. (Like working with BMP or something.) Maybe if you made ISO's of the 150+ computer games you own. Even 140 Gigabytes is a lot... well unless...

... but that's a LOT of porn.
Yeah, well I'll admit I did buy a video tuner card and all these huge games. And yes, I have made iso's of the computer games I own. And I've backed up the hard drives of all the other computers on the network... Most of the space is actually still free, but my 50GB linux partition that I don't use very often is a bit of a space waster. And having 9 seperate partitions does kinda split up the 60GB of space free. Oh, and one hint to never wasting hard drive space: Don't EVER write a computer program that calculates primes and saves them to the hard drive. Especially if you accidentally do a mistake... :dopekeen :o
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