Kitz Forum
Computers & Hardware => PC Hardware => Topic started by: Floydoid on October 08, 2021, 07:56:05 PM
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Today I had to remove one of the SATA drives from my machine - the one I use for backups and archive storage. Anyway Windows was so long booting up this morning, even trying a scan and repair of the errant drive before getting to the desktop, but Windows had more or less ground to a halt because it was struggling to recognise the drive, so physical removal was the quick fix solution. I found my old hard drive USB caddy and popped it in there to try it, but once again Windows was not recognising it and things ground to a halt.
So my question is, what are my options if Windows won't recognise it to the point where I could try some recovery and repair tools? I'd like to be able to recover the data as some of it is quite valuable and I've accumulated it over a long period of time.
Nobody backs up their backups, right?
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The point of a backup is its in addition to your main copy of the data. If it has data not found anywhere else, its not a backup its an archive and yes you should keep a backup of that. ;)
I mean technically if its important you should keep more than one backup, but once you have a lot of storage like I do its really not practical as my backup drives alone cost as much as a decent PC.
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I think it's a lesson learned.
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Sorry I can't offer actual help, I haven't had to attempt data recovery in decades (fortunately) but I have lost a LOT of photos over the years from CD/DVDs that failed, its heartbreaking.
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Sad news :(
The symptoms you've described suggest a failure on the mechanical side, which in my experience is what usually kills spinning disks.
There are companies out there that could doubtless recover the data but it won't be a cheap exercise.
Only you will know if the expense would be justified.
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Try running a Linux distro from a live DVD and see if you can mount the drive from that and recover some files.
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There are companies out there that could doubtless recover the data but it won't be a cheap exercise.
This is what I fear.
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I don't fancy tinkering with Linux - I was wondering if there are recovery tools that can run from a command prompt - what we used to call MS-DOS. But maybe it's not possible to do so outside of Windows, because as I explained mounting the drive causes Windows to virtually grind to a halt.
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No tinkering involved, you just run it from a Live DVD or USB stick without installing. Nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying it.
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/try-ubuntu-before-you-install#1-getting-started
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I still wouldn't have a clue where to start.
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Data Recovery https://www.runtime.org Get Data back pro is the one I have used for about 15 yrs, you can run a scan to see if any data is recoverable before buying. The license is life time, $79
Also run HD sentinel https://www.hdsentinel.com to see how bad the disk is first. Still Functional after trial period.
There are some tricks to getting data off failing disks, a lot depends on the failure point.
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You're all missing the point - how can test software be run when the drive is so knackered it slows Windows down to literally a snail's pace because it struggles to recognise it? It's not even possible to rt-click on it for the context menu.
I give up.
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You're all missing the point - how can test software be run when the drive is so knackered it slows Windows down to literally a snail's pace because it struggles to recognise it? It's not even possible to rt-click on it for the context menu.
I give up.
Windows is the worst place to attempt it as it will try to access it on boot. Linux wont try to auto-mount it so you can work on it at a lower level. But yes, if it partly works it will take a looooong time to attempt to recover any files.
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I think I'm just going to cut my losses and tun, and take it as a hard lesson learned. A lot of the stuff I can probably find again, but it will just take time. In the mean time I've ordered a replacement drive which will become my main data drive, and my current data drive will become my archiving drive. The most important stuff will also get further backed up, probably to DVD-ROM.
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Hi
if you can feel the drive spinning, remove the baby board from back of drive, clean the contacts and at same time look for blown/heated chips or dry solder joints and replace the baby board onto drive
test, if works, start recovery of data immediately - do not wait or power down
if drive does spin, and you use a usb hdd plugin to drive, gently put pressure upwards (very very gentle as you can easily damage drive) and downwards, whilst feeling the heads move (be prepared for drive head crash) and if not feeling/hearing the drive heads move, very gently shake the drive whilst the drive is spinning
Only attempt the above if you are sure the drive is totally broken and you have accepted the loss in full
Be prepared to immediately start recovery if drive becomes available to OS and there is no guarantee of time it will remain working or what level of access it would give
The above has worked for me in the past, but no guarantees and only try it if you have accepted the full loss of data - using the above would decrease the chance of data recovery for a specialist data recovery firm
Lastly, data recovery specialist cost is not as much as you think, circa £600 for a sata 2 TB drive and most will not charge if cannot be recovered. It could even be a failed BIOS on hdd but not knowing what you drive is, cannot say if it has a BIOS or split on chips
Good luck and we always backup our systems using R1soft
Many thanks
John
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I actually knocked one of my backup drives off a shelf while it was running a few months back, it jammed the head. :(
I've been meaning to give it another whack to see if I can revive it and use it for unimportant data such as game installs, though I suspect the platters are probably pretty trashed.
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Why accept defeat, just try a Linux live distro, its not difficult. If it works it works, if it doesn't you are no worse off.
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Why accept defeat, just try a Linux live distro, its not difficult. If it works it works, if it doesn't you are no worse off.
Agree - nothing to lose and you might even find that you like Linux. I'm typing this on an old HP laptop running Linux Mint and which does everything I need for everyday use. I do use Win10 as well but if that disappeared tomorrow I could certainly keep going quite happily with this.
The modern distros are plug-and-play on the whole and no more challenging to install than Windows. A live distro as mentioned just boots from USB or DVD so doesn't need you to actually install it at all.
:)
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Now I come to think of it, the problem could be mechanical, as I used to hear an occasional click coming from the tower, say 2/3 times a day, but since I removed the errant drive (2 days ago) I've not heard it at all. I didn't bother to try and investigate as it could have some from anywhere, or just been the result of a bit of thermal expansion somewhere.
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The clicking is not always indicative of a failing drive these days, all the drives in my NAS make the odd noise that at first had me going "oh crap, is a drive failing". Of course that depends, if its a LOUD click like the head suddenly smashing into the spindle, that could be.
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Seagate drives have the ticking heads/chirping noise when reading... always makes me nervous :no:
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It was a WD.
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Today I had to remove one of the SATA drives from my machine - the one I use for backups and archive storage. Anyway Windows was so long booting up this morning, even trying a scan and repair of the errant drive before getting to the desktop, but Windows had more or less ground to a halt because it was struggling to recognise the drive, so physical removal was the quick fix solution. I found my old hard drive USB caddy and popped it in there to try it, but once again Windows was not recognising it and things ground to a halt.
So my question is, what are my options if Windows won't recognise it to the point where I could try some recovery and repair tools? I'd like to be able to recover the data as some of it is quite valuable and I've accumulated it over a long period of time.
Nobody backs up their backups, right?
So to understand its more like an archive than a backup? a backup is a backup of data you have elsewhere, and I am guessing some of this data is "only" in your backup?
If the drive is in a bad enough state that the OS is struggling to even recognise it, then its past the point of any advice I could offer, so I only offer you best of luck in recovering it.
After its recovered consider a cloud service to backup, its probably more £££ efficient to use something like onedrive or backblaze, than buying physical hardware to backup data, especially considering you would have to routinely replace that hardware every X years as well.