Success!Recovery of data from DEAD drive(A Member needs HELP/ major Harddrive prob.)

[LPDad]

I just received a PM from one of our members who wishes to remain anonymous. He has a major problem and he needs our help comming up with a solution.

(I told him that this is nothing to be embarrassed about--stuff like this happens to me all the time , but I will respect his privacy and post this for him)
I feel that this is a problem that many of us will run into sooner or later, so by posting here we might be help him/her and also other members who might end up with the same problem.

THE PROBLEM:

Hi!

I've been visiting UTC for years but this is the first time I'm actually sending a message. I'm not aware if this will be posted but I hope not because I do not want to broadcast my ignorance.

Anyway, here's my problem. I would greatly appreciate the help.

I recently purchased a new housing/casing for my pc. I have average experience in hardware installations so I transferred all the components from the old shell to the new one myself.

After re-assembling and re-booting, windows ME performed a scandisk. Having encountered scandisk on several occassions, I thought nothing of it. After a few error messages, I got alarmed and clicked on "exit". The pc re-booted itself but windows ME did not start anymore.

I tried to re-boot from an emergency disk. It told me that the hard disk cannot be detected.

I tried scandisk. It said it cannot examine the drive.

I tried fdisk, it said that there was no hard disk present.

I checked cmos, cannot auto-detect so I edited the CHS according to the figures on the hard disk.

The hdd contains irreplacable pics of my baby when he was just minutes-old and a lot of other very important files. I would really like to recover them. The hard disk is just secondary.

I have gotten the impression that you welcome these types of problems. I hope you can advise me on what I can do to recover my files.

thank you,

OK Folks, He/she really needs our help on this one. Anyone come accross this problem before??? how did you solve it??

I am guessing that his master boot record is messed up/missing-- how can we replace it without a reformat?? better yet, how can we get his computer to see his harddrive again??

I am trying to locate a recovery program for him/her to try...any suggestions??? and how do you get the recovery program to work when the harddrive does not show up??

[igalan]

This is one of the nastiest problems...

I'm sorry, but if the BIOS fails to detect the disc, there is nothing you can do with software: the hdd hardware is damaged.

However there may be a chance: You need to get another hdd, exactly the same model, and replace the controller (the board that has attached below the disc). It's a bit tricky, but can be done. After this, if the hdd is properly detected, then software may be able to recover files, or even the file system.

If this still fails, then the disc itself may be damaged (or the heads, or drive, or...) then your only option is a Data Recovery Center (expensive, but if your files are so valuable...)

If someone else knows how to fix this with software I'd love to hear... If at least the BIOS detected the disc, there are programs that are able to recover files from very damaged file systems...

[rastagard]

Iglans assessment sounds about right to me. If the disk is damaged and not able to be detected, there is no software that will be able to recover the data from that disk.


I think his recomendations are the only hope here.

[Dr. Avery]

Is it possible that the partition has been hidden? When I installed redhat, my NTFS partition was not only made non-active, but also hidden. I used partition magic to fix it.

You may just need to use a partitioning device on it to make sure that it is still even a valid partition.

[mrgorilla]

Just finished reading this when a Linux guru was on tech tv regarding the exact same problem - said he had to recover data from his sister's dead drive last night. He used a new Linux distro similar to Knoppix. Haven't used this but go to http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/p...462645,00.html to read about it and for links to the download. I recently downloaded and burned the Knoppix - STD iso and it has some drive recovery tools on it also. Hope this helps!

[geffers]

this is probably stating the obvious but make sure you check the simple things first like all your plugs/leads etc are pushed in firmly/ the right way etc, ive always found that most problems are caused by overlooking the obvious and simple things, this is just a suggestion before you try all the other options.

[igalan]

Originally posted by Dr. Avery
Is it possible that the partition has been hidden? When I installed redhat, my NTFS partition was not only made non-active, but also hidden. I used partition magic to fix it.

Unfortunately if the BIOS does not detect the hdd, this means that there is no way to access the driver or its information no matter what program you use (you can't access the MBR -Master Boot Record- with the partition's table or anything else).

Something that is also worth trying is to use that same drive in another computer (just to be sure that the drive is damaged and not the mobo or ide cable).

[Fister]

So lets get this straight, it looks as though he damaged the hd during the transfer? Or did he add new parts (and untested parts) to internals? Or all he he did was purchase a new case and shove the old guts into it?

Well, I was going to say check your cmos settings, but that has already been done... What about rebuilding the old machine, and then seeing if it works?

[RipperRoo]

i think everyone is overlooking the obvious, to me this sounds like either a loose cable or a damaged pin on the hard drive.
i see a lot of machines with 'well used' drives and every now and again someone plug's the ide cable in wrong and pins disapear from view. have a look at the socket on both drive and board and check for damage, also check that you are plugged into 'IDE 0' and if the hard drive is set as a mster via the jumpers on the back, the hard drive is the first in line in the cable.

most ide cables have a 'lug' on them so you can only put them one way round, but lots dont so im incuding a pic as a guide

[RipperRoo]

as you can see in the above pic the ide cable has no lug, but it does have a red stripe down the side that indictes where 'pin 1' is
if it isnt marked on the body of the drive the end pin one is, then with the hole for the lug on top, the red stripe should always be to the right.

its also worth noting that the hard drive above has one pin missing dead center on the bottom row,this is normal, but if you find any other pins missing on your drive its due to damage.

[LPDad]

Ok, you have all given our anonymous member some HOPE.

I have been busy asking around tech shops for advice re my hdd problem. No one seemed to know what my problem was.

WOW!!!

I just read the replies and I am starting to have hope again. I wanted to jump in and join the discussion but I think I should try to do the advices first.

A bit of good news - I bought a new hdd, installed windows xp (because my driver files were in the old hdd and xp already has them) , and "slaved" the busted hdd and guess what? CMOS can already detect my hdd. Does that make it easier? But I still cannot access the drive if I click or scandisk it, though.

I tried a prog (recover it all demo) that I downloaded from download.cnet.com. It was able to see the drive, and presented the following options: scan the physical drive, scan the logical drive, and relink partition. I don't know what each does so I haven't tried it yet. I also downloaded fast-file recovery, media tools pro, zero assumption recovery, maxblast (for quantum hdds), and powermax but again, I dont know anything about MBRs, ROOT, and the like. I can learn, though.

I will continue to read the threads from your post and other related posts. By doing so, maybe I can get a better understanding of what scandisk did to my drive. I will also try to check out some of the advices already posted. Just to address a few:

- I doubt if the problem is physical becase I'd like to think that I was careful enough when I transferred the "guts"
- CMOS and windows xp can now detect the drive
- don't know anything about partition aside from the options in FDISK
- i didn't add any new parts
- I doubt if it's a loose cable because the new and old hdd are on the same cable. I also tried other cables.
- the pins are OK.

Many thanks to you and to those who posted replies. I really appreciate your efforts. Hope to get more advices.

Thanks again,

What do all of you think he sould do/try now??

[igalan]

If now Windows does detect the drive, this is very good. Now you can start trying with software to recover the lost files.

Personally I had a very good experience with Get Data Back (there is a version for Fat and another for NTFS). This software allows you to recover files from a damaged drive, even if the system is unable to mount any partition on this drive; you can copy the restored files in your new drive. It's a commercial product, but I believe that it's not really expensive. Since it can recover the files without writting to the damaged disk, after using this program you can try alternative programs to try to fix it further.

You can also try Norton Utilities. This kind of utilities have good and bad things. The good are that if everything works well, Norton will restore the file system with as many files as it can. The bad side is that to restore anything, Norton has to write to this disk, if it's too damaged maybe will overwrite useful areas making impossible to recover some files later... Anyway there is an undo option.

I would try first with Get Data Back to recover as many files as possible to the new drive, and later with Norton to try to fix the damaged disk. However without a clue about what could be wrong in this driver it's very difficult to help in such a complicated task (recovering files from a damaged disk). Something really important is to not use any software that will write to this disk (scandisk included) until you're sure that you got the most of the disk in the current state.

[igalan]

In case I didn't make myself clear, don't use scandisk on the damaged drive. First I would follow the recomendations I just posted. For such thing Scandisk can do more harm and reduce chances of a better fix. Norton Disk Doctor (ndd) is much better, but not until you restored as many files as possible. It is also possible that ndd can fix everything easily (fats out of sync, wrong data in partition table, mbr damaged...).

[LPDad]

Ok, did a little looking and found the following program:

Get Data Back.

It make some claims that I am not sure can be correct, but what the heck, it is worth a try...and if it DOES do what it promises...well then this will be just what the doctor ordered.

Info:

GetDataBack will recover your data if the hard
drive's partition table, boot record, FAT/MTF or
root directory are lost or damaged, data was lost
due to a virus attack, the drive was formatted,
fdisk has been run, a power failure has caused a
system crash, files were lost due to a software
failure, files were accidentally deleted...

GetDataBack can even recover your data when the
drive is no longer recognized by Windows.
It can likewise be used even if all directory
information - not just the root directory- is
missing.

Advanced algorithms will make sure that all
directories and sub directories are put together as
they were, and that long file names are
reconstructed correctly.


GetDataBack is read-only, meaning the program will
never attempt to write to the drive you are about
to recover. Please make sure to read the safety
instructions...

Location: http://www.runtime.org

Like I said, I am a little skeptical..but I just happen to have a nice 10 gb harddrive lying around here that "is no longer recognized by Windows"...hmmm...just maybe I will give this puppy a try..

[LPDad]

Looks like there is hope. Our member is trying the above proggy, and I asked him to report back to us.

He said that he was able to see the drive contents.
Hopefully this program will allow him to recover those files.