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IT Geeks - Hard Disk faliure and recovery

Unfortunately one of my two 500GB Hard Drives in my PC seems to be buggered. When accessing any files from it, the PC crashes. Having run some diagnostic checks, the HD seems to be running 30deg higher than the HD but I put that down to the cooling system in my PC. So we put the HD in another PC and found it was running at a lower temp but it still seems to be crashing.

So we've tried to use some HD recovery software but this has been fruitless as the HD fails after copying over about 500MB of Data (of the 11GB I need to recover - photos of my daughter etc) so we're putting it down to the operating temperature.

When speaking to a friend on the phone last night, he suggested putting the HD in the freezer over night and then reconnecting the next day to copy the data over. Then repeat as necessary. Has anyone else heard of doing this? Is there a fail-safe way of recovering the data I need as my wife will kill me if I lose the pictures of our daughter (although I do have the majority of them backed up to other sources).

Help!!!

Comments

  • John, I would never put it in the freezer....When it starts to warm up again it's going to get damp. The only thing I can suggest is to get it over to me so we can have a look at it. We have some very expensive software that is designed for this type of issue.

    Unless anyone else has any better idea's but please don't freeze it.
  • I swear by a peice of software called spinrite. Fantastic bit of kit and has fixed almost every hard disc problem I have come across.

    costs about £50 if you want to buy it from Steve Gibson's website or drop my a whisper with your email and I'll drop you a copy of it by email as it is tiny.
  • He said to put it in a sealed bag in the freezer. This presumably so no moisture gets in. Other than that, I did see a picture on the web of someone holding an icepack to the HD in order to get the data transferred off.

    That'll teach me not to gave a proper back-up system in place.

    Dan, we've tried four different types of disk recovery software but it keeps freezing whatever PC the HD is connected to. If you think you can recover the data on the HD then I'd be more than willing to bring it over to you mate.
  • An external HD died on me yesterday. thx for the tip on spinrite i'll give it a go this morning.
  • Tried turning it off and then turning it on again?

    That's all my helpdesk (oxymoron if ever I've heard of one) tell me to do!
  • If I had a pound for every time I've heard these kind of stories.. problem is backups on a large scale aren't easy or cheap.

    Check out Rev drives they are a bit cheaper than previous methods, no doubt others on here can comment further.

    You might also want to look at doing mirror disks, this is when you have two hard disks in a pair so if one fails you can switch to the other, worth looking at because single hard disk failure is probably the most common data loss scenario for home users.
  • I would agree with the Rev drive. that's what I use. Good capacity and fairly compact.
  • You could try booting (with the hard disk in place) a live linux disk (http://www.knoppix.org/) The knoppix OS boots from your CD/DVD drive (need to set the PC to boot from CD first in BIOS) and should mount the hard disks. Even if your hard disk has a file system problem, linux may still be able to read it. No guarantees mind but I have used it with about a 60-70% success rate.
  • all i can read is geek geek geek jargon jargon blah blah geek geek in this thread. anyone else? :-)
  • [cite]Posted By: suzisausage[/cite]all i can read is geek geek geek jargon jargon blah blah geek geek in this thread. anyone else? :-)

    I will translate it for you:

    1. Computers are evil. Mine won't let me access my data.
    2. If it won't let you access your data stick it in the freezer. The evil bits don't like the cold
    3. Don't stick it in the freezer it will make the evil bits angry when you get them out again
    4. To avoid evil behaviour in the future copy all your music and porn to a cd. this spoils the fun of your evil computer and it will stop winding you up
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  • [cite]Posted By: kigelia[/cite]
    [cite]Posted By: suzisausage[/cite]all i can read is geek geek geek jargon jargon blah blah geek geek in this thread. anyone else? :-)

    I will translate it for you:

    1. Computers are evil. Mine won't let me access my data.
    2. If it won't let you access your data stick it in the freezer. The evil bits don't like the cold
    3. Don't stick it in the freezer it will make the evil bits angry when you get them out again
    4. To avoid evil behaviour in the future copy all your music and porn to a cd. this spoils the fun of your evil computer and it will stop winding you up

    LOL....IT for begineers....Quality.
  • edited May 2007
    [cite]Posted By: suzisausage[/cite]all i can read is geek geek geek jargon jargon blah blah geek geek in this thread. anyone else? :-)

    And no one's even mentioned setting up the two hard drives in a mirrored raid configuration yet :)
  • [cite]Posted By: suzisausage[/cite]all i can read is geek geek geek jargon jargon blah blah geek geek in this thread. anyone else? :-)

    lol, agreed, geek in ell
  • Putting it in a freezer isn't as daft as it sounds - but the bit about putting it in then getting some data off it, putting it back in and repeating the process is patent nonsense.

    I salvaged about 10Gb worth of data from a fubared drive in this way about five years ago - but there's no way it would ever work again for the same disk. There are a couple of reasons why this method sometimes works - too nerdy to go into here.

    But, by far the easiest way to recover data from the disk if the boot sector is fucked (and I suspect it's either that or the File Allocation table is corrupt) is to stick the drive in another PC on a secondary IDE channel anhd grab it from there. If this doesn't work, then the File Table might be so screwed that 'normal' recovery methods won't work - in which case, if the data is precious to you (and the law of the Sod states that it inevitably WILL be) then I'd send it off to disk recovery people to get as much of it back for you as they can. They use forensic disk examination tools like EnCase to rescue the data - you'd be surprised how much they can recover in this manner but it ain't cheap.
  • [cite]Posted By: Alex Wright[/cite]
    [cite]Posted By: suzisausage[/cite]all i can read is geek geek geek jargon jargon blah blah geek geek in this thread. anyone else? :-)

    And no one's even mentioned setting up the two hard drives in a mirrored raid configuration yet :)

    LOL! This sounds like that sketch on Harry and Paul with Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak
  • or buy a polaroid camera? :-)
  • edited May 2007
    [cite]Posted By: CharltonDan[/cite]Tried turning it off and then turning it on again?

    That's all my helpdesk (oxymoron if ever I've heard of one) tell me to do!
    I know it's a cliche, but you'd be amazed the number of times that works.
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