Hard Drives

[ghiop]

Has anyone else lost a hard drive lately? Mine went SMART status Bad, Backup and Replace. So, when I went to backup my files, I made it as far as clicking copy before everything died. I think my computer was taunting me. But, other than that, does anyone know any good ways to get the data off?

My only hopes right now are
a) Plugging it in as a slave in a different computer and hoping only some of the sectors are dead
b) getting a data recovery system, and I don't really have the money for that.

But, if you folks have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

[sushi128]

nope, it's dead. clicking means the heads are fucked up, and probably messed up your information. sorry, but that's it.

here's somethin that miraculously worked once: start bangin (with your palm) the narrow side of the hard drive. it worked once for my uncle's IBM HD; musta banged the heads back in place? worth a try, not like it costs anything. tried it again and it hasn't worked ever since. seems like a one in million chance you could get the heads to park back up again.

[ghiop]

I think I phrased that poorly. It wasn't actually making a clicking noise. The reference to clicking was me using the mouse to select Copy to try to save some of my files ahead of the crash. I don't know if that helps any, but if nothing else, I'll try smacking it.

Should make myself feel better, if nothing else. :)

[sushi128]

uh....no clicking??? then fuck, just do the slave thing. as long as it spins up and the BIOS detects it, u still got a shot :D

first, try it your way through windows. if that doesn't work, ghost it (norton ghost).

and in my experience, SMART is useless. i got the SMART detector, and it says everything's fucked up; been that way for 2 years :rolleyes:

[Freakonaleash89]

You can download system data recovery utils from certain P2P networks I assume if you dont have money.

I have been having harddrive problems too! Couple weeks ago I got this new 120gb Western Digital 8mb cache Special Edition and this weekend it starting having extreme vibration- like a fucking lawnmower. And my computer got as slow as hell when this started happening. Swapped it into the master slave spot and it seems to be behaving but I had another harddrive just a while back started clicking and going off and on in the my computer drive list. I had another harddrive fail only about a month ago.... way too many harddrive fuckups... I'm thinking maybe the motherboard is fucked and its just making it look like the HDs are fucked, What do you guys think?

[ghiop]

Thanks for the help, guys. I think something still works on it, cause when I try to boot into safe mode, it read about half the files on the XP partition. So, I'll keep you posted on how this turns out.

But turning to Freakonaleash, I have a question. Well, I have two. Any recommendations on good recovery programs? And second, have you tried plugging the hard drives into other computers? That might help you get a better idea of what's wrong. Or, if you feel like getting really in-depth, you can always borrow a mobo. Good luck, though.

[aleincaveman]

I got an hard drive that has bad sectors all over it. It has over 5 megs of data in them. So says scandisk. It's just a little 6.5 meg drive. I run it as a slave. I don't use SMART. It sucks. But I do regularly scan it and it does a good job of keeping the files that I save on it. I just make sure that windows knows where the bad sectors are by running scandisk. I've never lost anything. But I would never run it as master boot.
So as it was said before try the slave thing you my find that you can keep using it. Just remember not to keep your most important data on it. I use mine as a backup for nude pics, downloads and such. Nothing thats gonna wreck me if I lose it. Hell I believe in running them to death. When it quits I won't cry. But till it does?:D

[unskinnybob]

Did you mean 6.5GB? 6.5MB is nothing!

[WhoGivesARatsAss]

get a seagate.. those puppies never die!.. anyways as said earlier u would want to slave it for now and search google for recovery programs or download.com even!

[Freakonaleash89]

But turning to Freakonaleash, I have a question. Well, I have two. Any recommendations on good recovery programs? And second, have you tried plugging the hard drives into other computers? That might help you get a better idea of what's wrong. Or, if you feel like getting really in-depth, you can always borrow a mobo. Good luck, though.

I don't know much about recovery programs, just that they are out there. (if I lost my porn folder I would try to find one real fast though). and I haven't tried the HD in another computer yet because it may mess up the OS install in the shock from computer to computer I don't want the hastle.

[sushi128]

just install it as a slave. it can't mess up your OS that way (winXP is very good with that). as for recovery programs, try ghost. it works on DOS, so it's pretty low level, and takes an image: Norton Ghost (http://users.rcn.com/may.lai/ghost.exe)

and i've had a seagate die. funny thing is, i couldn't tell cause they were so damn quiet (unable to read/write for a few days, then it just stopped spinning up completely).

[ghiop]

Ok. Yeah, I should have gotten a Seagate, I know...

Probably better than the one that came with the computer. Ugh. All the same, the next one is on the company, so I'm a big fan of that. But I'm gonna try your ideas tomorrow. Thanks again.

[ghiop]

Just a little update. So I got it home and pulled some of the data off of it, so that was fun. Except then it messed up the computer at home. So who knows?

Luckily, the computer I did it on belongs to is a tech support guy who didn't have anything else to do and was looking for a challenge. So, in closing, thanks again. :)