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Hard Drive repair

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  • SATA
  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Storage
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August 4, 2014 12:38:57 PM

I have a SATA 1TB internam 3.5" HDD that is corrupted(physically I think). When I plug in into my HDD dock it tells me it has to be formatted and the HDD is being seen as RAW. Tons of googling and trying different methods like the freezer trick, tried booting it into an Linux/UNB system since they recognize RAW. still nothing. I'm assuming one of the platters are damaged since I hear a click when it spins up. I have not tried to open the HDD yet, I have never done this. I really need the data on that drive. Is opening it even a viable option or are there any other things to try at this point?

Thanks

More about : hard drive repair

August 4, 2014 1:16:27 PM

RAW just means the hard drive is unformatted, and it just needed to be formatted.
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a c 327 G Storage
August 4, 2014 1:37:36 PM

Can you retrieve the drive's SMART report? You could use CrystalDiskInfo or HD Sentinel.

Some USB-SATA bridges are configured with 4KB sectors. Can you show us what DMDE (freeware disc editor) sees in its Partitions window?

http://dmde.com/
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a c 100 G Storage
August 4, 2014 6:52:41 PM

volcom4c said:
I have a SATA 1TB internam 3.5" HDD that is corrupted(physically I think). When I plug in into my HDD dock it tells me it has to be formatted and the HDD is being seen as RAW. Tons of googling and trying different methods like the freezer trick, tried booting it into an Linux/UNB system since they recognize RAW. still nothing. I'm assuming one of the platters are damaged since I hear a click when it spins up. I have not tried to open the HDD yet, I have never done this. I really need the data on that drive. Is opening it even a viable option or are there any other things to try at this point?

Thanks

You're just doing more damage to your drive by putting it in the freezer. If you do need your data then I suggest you better send it to a professional data recovery service facility. The more damage you've done to the drive the more expensive it is to recover.

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August 6, 2014 9:17:04 AM

trekzone said:
volcom4c said:
I have a SATA 1TB internam 3.5" HDD that is corrupted(physically I think). When I plug in into my HDD dock it tells me it has to be formatted and the HDD is being seen as RAW. Tons of googling and trying different methods like the freezer trick, tried booting it into an Linux/UNB system since they recognize RAW. still nothing. I'm assuming one of the platters are damaged since I hear a click when it spins up. I have not tried to open the HDD yet, I have never done this. I really need the data on that drive. Is opening it even a viable option or are there any other things to try at this point?

Thanks

You're just doing more damage to your drive by putting it in the freezer. If you do need your data then I suggest you better send it to a professional data recovery service facility. The more damage you've done to the drive the more expensive it is to recover.



I understand what RAW means, but I do not want to format a drive I am trying to recover data from. Kinda defeats the purpose. The minute or so in the freezer was recommended by a HDD repair company as a quick fix for "a warped platter".

Thanks anyway
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August 6, 2014 9:17:55 AM

fzabkar said:
Can you retrieve the drive's SMART report? You could use CrystalDiskInfo or HD Sentinel.

Some USB-SATA bridges are configured with 4KB sectors. Can you show us what DMDE (freeware disc editor) sees in its Partitions window?

http://dmde.com/


Thanks I'll look into it.
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Best solution

a c 365 G Storage
August 6, 2014 7:59:07 PM

The File System type "RAW" does NOT usually mean your HDD has severe physical damage. Often it means only that some of the DATA in key Windows housekeeping files at the start of the HDD is corrupted. The result is that windows does not understand the disk and gives up, then throws you this note. In those cases your actual data files on the drive are OK. You just need a way to recover that data.

This may be more complex than you can do yourself. I'm saying that because you don't appear to have a solid understanding of hard drives and their problems. But it IS something that can be handled by a home user with some patience and skill.

For starters, look on the Internet for RAW Format data recovery. There are several utility packages that claim to do this work; two that come to mind are DetDataBack for NTFS and EaseUS. Almost all of them have one important method: they will NOT just re-write data on the faulty disk. They avoid writing anything to the faulty disk, so they don't make the problem worse. Instead, they will read data on the disk, assemble them into intact complete files as best they can, and the write those recovered files to a DIFFERENT hard drive. So you MUST have a spare hard drive with at least as much empty space on it as the faulty drive. By the way, most often the problem is a simple data corruption issue in one small place, and the tool can recover just about ALL your files.

These utilities will write all they can recover to the second drive. Then it is up to you to move those to a final drive unit. In some cases you might want to have a new trouble-free unit to put them on. Some people, though, will test the "bad" drive thoroughly after the data recovery. IF they conclude the HDD was all OK, and it was all just a data corruption glitch, they may wipe the old "bad" drive clean and put all the data back on that same unit.

If you feel you can't do this yourself, you MIGHT find a computer-skilled person locally who can do the job with such utilities, for a modest price. Full professional data recovery by expert companies can be done, but that may cost a few thousand $.
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August 11, 2014 1:33:49 PM

Thanks, this was very helpful and I am capable of trying these methods. I've custom built gaming and rendering rigs for almost 10 years, I have just never(lucky I guess) encountered a bad HDD. I also do have a very good backup plan for all of my important docs. This just happened to be a drive I thought was lost in a move, but I just found it. Since I learn as I go(PC builds are a hobby), this is not something I have researched before...So I started on good ole' Toms.
Thanks Again.

Paperdoc said:
The File System type "RAW" does NOT usually mean your HDD has severe physical damage. Often it means only that some of the DATA in key Windows housekeeping files at the start of the HDD is corrupted. The result is that windows does not understand the disk and gives up, then throws you this note. In those cases your actual data files on the drive are OK. You just need a way to recover that data.

This may be more complex than you can do yourself. I'm saying that because you don't appear to have a solid understanding of hard drives and their problems. But it IS something that can be handled by a home user with some patience and skill.

For starters, look on the Internet for RAW Format data recovery. There are several utility packages that claim to do this work; two that come to mind are DetDataBack for NTFS and EaseUS. Almost all of them have one important method: they will NOT just re-write data on the faulty disk. They avoid writing anything to the faulty disk, so they don't make the problem worse. Instead, they will read data on the disk, assemble them into intact complete files as best they can, and the write those recovered files to a DIFFERENT hard drive. So you MUST have a spare hard drive with at least as much empty space on it as the faulty drive. By the way, most often the problem is a simple data corruption issue in one small place, and the tool can recover just about ALL your files.

These utilities will write all they can recover to the second drive. Then it is up to you to move those to a final drive unit. In some cases you might want to have a new trouble-free unit to put them on. Some people, though, will test the "bad" drive thoroughly after the data recovery. IF they conclude the HDD was all OK, and it was all just a data corruption glitch, they may wipe the old "bad" drive clean and put all the data back on that same unit.

If you feel you can't do this yourself, you MIGHT find a computer-skilled person locally who can do the job with such utilities, for a modest price. Full professional data recovery by expert companies can be done, but that may cost a few thousand $.


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August 13, 2014 10:33:36 AM

Just an FYI..I ended up using the free recovery program called "Recuva". It found everything I needed.
Thanks again.

Paperdoc said:
The File System type "RAW" does NOT usually mean your HDD has severe physical damage. Often it means only that some of the DATA in key Windows housekeeping files at the start of the HDD is corrupted. The result is that windows does not understand the disk and gives up, then throws you this note. In those cases your actual data files on the drive are OK. You just need a way to recover that data.

This may be more complex than you can do yourself. I'm saying that because you don't appear to have a solid understanding of hard drives and their problems. But it IS something that can be handled by a home user with some patience and skill.

For starters, look on the Internet for RAW Format data recovery. There are several utility packages that claim to do this work; two that come to mind are DetDataBack for NTFS and EaseUS. Almost all of them have one important method: they will NOT just re-write data on the faulty disk. They avoid writing anything to the faulty disk, so they don't make the problem worse. Instead, they will read data on the disk, assemble them into intact complete files as best they can, and the write those recovered files to a DIFFERENT hard drive. So you MUST have a spare hard drive with at least as much empty space on it as the faulty drive. By the way, most often the problem is a simple data corruption issue in one small place, and the tool can recover just about ALL your files.

These utilities will write all they can recover to the second drive. Then it is up to you to move those to a final drive unit. In some cases you might want to have a new trouble-free unit to put them on. Some people, though, will test the "bad" drive thoroughly after the data recovery. IF they conclude the HDD was all OK, and it was all just a data corruption glitch, they may wipe the old "bad" drive clean and put all the data back on that same unit.

If you feel you can't do this yourself, you MIGHT find a computer-skilled person locally who can do the job with such utilities, for a modest price. Full professional data recovery by expert companies can be done, but that may cost a few thousand $.


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a c 365 G Storage
August 13, 2014 6:05:48 PM

Glad you got your stuff back. Thanks for the Best Solution.
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