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Recovering Failed Hard Drive

Tags:
  • Computers
  • Hard Drives
  • Recovery Partition
  • Windows
  • Partition
  • Storage
  • SATA
  • File System
  • Data Recovery
  • Software
Last response: in Storage
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August 9, 2014 8:04:12 PM

On Wednesday, I turned my computer on and Windows would fail to load. It will freeze on the Windows Logo.

My initial thoughts was that the OS did an update which caused it to crash.

My computer setup is:
1 60GB SSD Drive with Windows Pro on it
1 1TB Sata Drive paritioned C:/ 250GB with Win 7 Ultimate and D:/ 750GB used for file storage.

This is dual bootable.

I could not boot into safemode, it would hang – can't recall what it hanged at, but it was the file after drive.sys, or something like that.

So I took out the drive, put it into a USB caddy. In doing so, I could see the partitions, but I couldn't see the parition size on the larger partition.

When trying to access the smaller partition, I could only manage to get two folders deep – then explorer would just hang. As soon as I powered down the drive, the PC would become instantly responsive.

I could hear the drive make a "click" sound every 5 to 10 seconds.

My next step was to use CloneZilla to clone it, however, in my attemps, I am faced with the below screens.

http://s30.postimg.org/v8cogehtt/20140809_181326.jpg

Without knowing what it was doing, I cancelled it by hitting Alt Control Delete.

So I put the hard drive in another USB Dock, and it loaded in Windows, but now the drive says it was unallocated and should be formated. However, the partitions are no longer there. UPDATE::: But when booting with a Ubuntu Live CD the partitions came back, but it could not mount, and ubunu recommended doing a force mount. What are the reprecussions on doing this?

I hope the caddy I had it in originally wasn't the cause and made it even worse.

Trying CloneZilla again, it reports invalid parition table and the program terminates.

I ran EASUS which failed at the partition manager, but leaving it on overnight, it recovered something like 100 partitions, with the majority of them being the size of the disk.

Selecting a few paritions are running it, it found some of my files - though everyrthing was all over the place.

When I try to recover them a and open them, it says the files are corrupt (Word, Excel, JPG) files. Looking at the hex values, it all reports as 0.

So can any help with:

1) Restore the partition table
2) Able to restore the files, hopefully within the folder structure

More about : recovering failed hard drive

a b G Storage
August 9, 2014 8:18:49 PM

Your read write heads have failed, or the magnetic platter is degrading.
If you had a lot of messages, about sector errors, Cylindrical redundancy errors.
It was a sure sign.
You should of got a new drive and backed the old one up to it.

Your going to have to use a windows OS install disk and use the tools or repair options.
Scan the drive in question for errors on sectors and to correct/ rebuild the file system or partition table.

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a c 327 G Storage
August 9, 2014 9:01:49 PM

Examine the drive's SMART report.
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Related resources
August 9, 2014 9:54:01 PM

Shaun o said:
Your read write heads have failed, or the magnetic platter is degrading.
If you had a lot of messages, about sector errors, Cylindrical redundancy errors.
It was a sure sign.
You should of got a new drive and backed the old one up to it.

Your going to have to use a windows OS install disk and use the tools or repair options.
Scan the drive in question for errors on sectors and to correct/ rebuild the file system or partition table.



That does not sound good. Those lines in the screenshot, are the the sector errors and Cylindrical errors you are talking about?

I have tried using the OS install disk. I accept the keyboard and language, hit "repair windows" and that's as far as I can get. Then the hard drive starts making the "click sound"

When I put the hard drive in another computer, I can choose the OS (because of Dual boot), but that's about it. If I try using the drive as a secondary drive on another computer OS installation, that also freezes.

Update: When I take the SATA drive out so it's just the 60GB SSD, boot with the Windows Installation Disk, hit repair OS, there are no OS listed, but when I click load drivers, I can view the files on the SSD.

I think I had the boot manager installed on the Sata drive, but surely the SSD should boot, which is doesn't.

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August 9, 2014 9:54:18 PM

fzabkar said:
Examine the drive's SMART report.


How can I do this?
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August 15, 2014 6:38:41 PM

Hello, I ran a quick SMART report using the manufactures Windows software and it passed.

Loading Ubuntu, I can load the C partition fine, and browse most of the data, though there is nothing really there that I want. The data I want is in the D partition, which when trying to mount, I get this error.

http://s22.postimg.org/dek9dzjtd/20140816_110716.jpg

So my trouble is trying to run a CHKDSK on Windows as:

1) The OS Won't Load
2) Can't Get into Safemode
3) The Windows Repair Tool Does not work
4) Loading the OS CD and hitting Repair does freezes
5) Putting Hard Drive in another PC won't load that PC's OS
6) Using a USB caddy only shows one partition, unformatted and RAW
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Best solution

a c 327 G Storage
August 16, 2014 2:34:43 PM

The manufacturer's Windows software does not report raw SMART values. What does CrystalDiskInfo say?

Your new USB caddy may be configured with a 4KB sector size, in which case the drive will appear to be unformatted.

What do you see in sector 0 with DMDE (freeware disc editor)?
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October 16, 2014 4:19:57 AM

Hello everyone,

For those reading this, I have found a solution, which recovered 100% of my data.

I know it's annoying reading a thread that someone has the same issue, but there is no solution. So here it is.

http://www.jackcola.org/2014/09/recover-data-from-faile...

Basically, I used the latest version of Ubuntu on a Live CD and OFSMount

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