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Author Corrupt laptop HDD need to recover files?
csweatherston
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Registered: 16th Jan 06
Location: Devon
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4th Jul 10 at 20:23   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

Hi folks.
Ive got a old laptop which i need to get some files off of (pretty important files)

Seems the hdd is corrupt, wont boot... In a different machine it comes up with hdd failure.
Its an old ide 2.5"

I tried XP recovery to reload boot sector, which it didnt like.
tried running as a slave (on my dirty Machine) whcih didnt work.. Froze the whole system.

Last idea is to get a ide> usb caddy and run it as an external HDD. cost me £3 from ebay so if it doesnt owrk theres no big loss.

Any other ideas? Cheers.
csweatherston
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Registered: 16th Jan 06
Location: Devon
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5th Jul 10 at 19:46   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

bump, Any ideas appreciated.
Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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5th Jul 10 at 19:55   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

if you've got it connected to another machine (as a slave/secondary drive), then use something like GetDataBack on it (cab had for free). Just make sure you use the right version for the filesystem, so GetDataBack FAT for FAT and GetDataBack NTFS for NTFS (you get the idea )

Edit - If the drive is just refusing to load into Windows then chances are you can access the driver perfectly fine as a slave drive if you attach it to another machine.

[Edited on 05-07-2010 by Dom]
Doug
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Registered: 8th Oct 03
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5th Jul 10 at 19:59   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

Download 'Knoppix'
http://www.knoppix.net/

and boot it up as a live disc. See if you can access the hard drive using that. May be able to copy stuff off to a USB drive that way.
csweatherston
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Registered: 16th Jan 06
Location: Devon
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5th Jul 10 at 20:37   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

Dom - i cant even get it to reconise the disc., it shows in bios, but not useable anywhere else.

i connected it to my good machine, but it wouldnt even show in bios... But thats all sata, i dont think it likes ide.
willay
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Registered: 10th Nov 02
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5th Jul 10 at 20:44   View Garage View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

usb hdd caddy idea is a good idea, if it was me I'd run linux on the fucked system (bootable CD like ubuntu) and use that to mount the hard disk and copy the files over the network to somewhere alright.Basically what Doug is proposing!

Some hard drives just wont have it though, I've seen all sorts of crazy ideas on the internet like puttig it in the freeze for a day then connecting up to use it. Apparently works on alot of fucked hard drives but not for very long.
adiohead
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Registered: 28th Sep 01
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5th Jul 10 at 20:55   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

I recovered a faulty hard drive using a cheap SATA/IDE to USB cable.
Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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5th Jul 10 at 22:30   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

quote:
Originally posted by csweatherston
Dom - i cant even get it to reconise the disc., it shows in bios, but not useable anywhere else.

i connected it to my good machine, but it wouldnt even show in bios... But thats all sata, i dont think it likes ide.


If the bios can see it then i would run GetBackData on the drive (run it as a secondary drive in your decent system) and see what it can retrieve.

Booting up to a linux distro via a live CD (Ubuntu etc) is a good shout, just make sure you have a usb drive or a network share set to copy the files to.

Although it's possible the drive is 'proper fucked', in which case you need to get creative. The freezer trick does work, i've done it a few times to drives where a drives heads have became 'sticky' and it allowed the drive to work long enough that i could grab an image of the drive (and do a recovery on that drive).

Ian W
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Registered: 8th Nov 03
Location: Wirral, Merseyside
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6th Jul 10 at 11:08   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

quote:
Originally posted by willay
usb hdd caddy idea is a good idea, if it was me I'd run linux on the fucked system (bootable CD like ubuntu) and use that to mount the hard disk and copy the files over the network to somewhere alright.Basically what Doug is proposing!

Some hard drives just wont have it though, I've seen all sorts of crazy ideas on the internet like puttig it in the freeze for a day then connecting up to use it. Apparently works on alot of fucked hard drives but not for very long.


I did the freezer trick on a failed hard drive a couple of years ago, was a case of nothing to lose so might aswell try it - it worked ! Got about 3 hours of it, enough time to pull the data off
csweatherston
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Registered: 16th Jan 06
Location: Devon
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7th Jul 10 at 17:50   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

Tried the freezer trick. 24 hours.. no good.
Also tried booting from a live linux disc... No good.

Its corrupted to raw i think?.
With the usb caddy, wehn i plug it in it asks to format.
chkdsk says its not compatable with raw.. and crashes every other programme i try to open the drive.

currently trying easus data recover, its found 39 files.. but i guarantee it'll crash within 30 mins.

Any other ideas?
Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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7th Jul 10 at 19:22   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

Does the drive actually spin and power up?
Is there any clicking noise (drive heads/arms fubar'd etc)?
Will it only power for a certain length of time before it becomes unresponsive?

Also you did put the drive in a air tight sealed bag before you stuck it in the freezer?


If the drive is in working condition (ie: mechanically sound - use something like UBCD and run a diag on the drive), then it's likely to be a corrupt MBR etc in which case you might be able to correct by using windows diskpart or bootsect commands.
Cole
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Registered: 11th Nov 02
Location: eastbourne Drives:zafira sold now a qashqai
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7th Jul 10 at 19:23   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

listen to what doug says he does this shizzle for csi no lie digital forensics is his game
csweatherston
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Registered: 16th Jan 06
Location: Devon
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7th Jul 10 at 20:23   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

UPDATE:
I got all the needed files off the drive, i recovered 18,000 files!... awesome.

But, not one of them is readable
they all come up with an error when opening.

Any ideas?

Yeah, airtight bag Dom, it clicks and whines like hell though.
Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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7th Jul 10 at 22:29   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

Sounds like it's "Proper Fucked"!
I'm guessing it spins up ok though if you're able to run recovery software on it? Did the freezer trick help at all (usually it helps when you have bodged heads/bearings etc)?

If you can get it to last long enough i would take an image of the drive (can do it in GetDataBack, obviously requires you to have another drive that has the recovery drive size in free space - recovering 120GB drive, you need 120GB free on another etc) and try and recover through that. You can then probably attempt to see if you can get the filesystem corrected on the actual drive, as said look at the diskpart and bootsect commands (also google 'drive raw ntfs' as there is plenty of info about and software to do it without deleting the drives content), and then try and recover it again.
csweatherston
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Registered: 16th Jan 06
Location: Devon
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7th Jul 10 at 23:08   View User's Profile U2U Member Reply With Quote

I think it is propper fucked indeed lol
Im just trying a newer version of getdataback now...
Keeps reading error 21 on every sector.
im not too fussed about the boot sector, the laptops ancient now anyways.. as is the 20gb hdd lol.
I just want the 13gb of pics off of it.

 
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