Team-BHP - Crashed Hard Disk

Hey ppl.

I had bought a 200 Gb Extnl Seagate hard disk about an year back and it had loads of useful information on it. All top gear videos, my Camera pics, About 25 Gigs of Mp3, must have movies Etc. The disk was almost full!!

I connect the hard disk to my PC and laptop using the USB inputs.

whenever i connect the extnl hard disk each of the partition is scannes and assigned a drive name ( g,h, i ..)

Recently i found that one of the 60 Gb partition out of the 3 partitions ( 60+60+80) was having some problem while the system was trying to access the data which has rendered all the partitions useless.

I cannot access any of my priceless data.

Can anybody suggest/help me recover my data.please:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hellcat

Connect the external Hard-disk before you switch on you system. When the computer boots it’ll scan for the Disk…do a scan disk and defrag, it should help.

on my laptop if i connect this way the laptop doesnt startup and hangs( its on windosxp)
Need to chk on my PC.

Is there anything else that can be done..

Seems to me that hard drive has failed but you can still recover the data from it, u need to remove the disk from the box & attach physically inside the comp in secondary channel & try to see if the hard disk is detecting or not.
its a long process for recovery, if your data is very important i recommend get some professional help locally & dont experiment with it.

first of all...give more information on what is the exact equipment!...is it a factory built external drive or a make-shift thing with after market casing??

It is possible that there has been some physical damage to your equipment, and in that case, you MUST NOT try experimenting. take it to a proffessional. The more you try to experiment, the more loss it would cause.

p.s: other partitions are working as usual?? or the data rate has become very slow or somthing????

For starters, cut your losses. Do not connect the USB drive to the PC until you have enough free space on the PC itself to copy the recovered data to. There's no point in running the drive unless you can actually do something to get data off.

There are several data revovery programs you can get to attempt recovery - here's a sampling of the free tools. http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/sy...arecovery.html

I guess actually buying a regular program may be the final way out though. O&O disc recovery is a program that will work well, if the drive is being detected.

When you're ready to go, carefully take the drive out of its external casing and connect it directly to the computer, then run the program.

This method will only work if the drive is being detected though. If it is not even being detected, then there may be other tricks such as the freezer trick that can be tried. This involves wrapping the drive in an anti-static bag and leaving it to cool in your freezer overnight - then connecting it and attempting to get some of your data off - either directly or with the help of a recovery program.

Good Luck!

I have two HDD's - a 40GB and 80GB. There are four partitions, two on each HDD. The operating system is on the 80GB HDD. A few weeks back, the 80GB suddenly stopped responding. When the PC starts, it only detects the 40GB HDD and the rest of the devices.

The 80GB HDD is not detected. Called in an engineer who tried connecting the 80GB with the 40GB wires, but to no avail. It seems when you justtt press the power button, you can hear the 80GB whirrr, but two seconds later, it dies off.

I now face a risk of losing a lottt of data. Data includes approximately:

15000+ photos (MOST of them are the car and bike pics)
15 Top Gear Videos
10 Movies
The total amounts to approximately 40GB.

Please post in any important information that would help me recover it.

Gordon, in such events I usually try to connect my slave HDD (your 80GB in this case) to a friends computer to check if its working fine or not. Does the HDD light on the CPU panel (red LED) stay 'ON'?
I didn't quite understand what the engineer did by connecting the 80GB HDD with 40GB cable. What type of a Hard disk do you have, is it a normal IDE or Sata?

As per your post your HDD spins for around 2 minutes or so
I suggest you take out your HDD, put in a air tight zip lock bag, put in in the freezer for 3-4 hours. Make sure the bag is airtight, otherwise there will be condensation and more damage.
You can extract around 20 minutes of life.
The best way to do this is to use the HDD in an external casing. Keep the computer booted up, plug in the extern casing through USB, and start transferring.
If this does not work you need expertise in using programs like ddrescue(open source hence free), otherwise you will need to pay someone to do it for you.

If you know somebody proficent in linux, I suggest you try something from here
10 Best Security Live CD Distros (Pen-Test, Forensics & Recovery) »

List of LiveDistros - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:

Originally Posted by tsk1979 (Post 427004)

I agree here....It will work try it....and connect it with a usb external casing only not through direct computer connection......once I saved my laptop data through this method.......

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gordon (Post 426972)

you can hear the 80GB whirrr, but two seconds later, it dies off.

Look like HDD is having physical spindle problem. If that is the case other than giving to professionals ( may not want to do if the data is not that critical - heavy for pocket) the freezer technique may work. Otherwise disconnect the drive for some days ( data and power cable) and re-connect - may work.

Gordon

In case your disk has crashed, there are some competent recovery agents around. PM if you want any numbers / references.

On a related note, always maintain a backup. If not daily, atleast a weekly backup. I use a software called SecondCopy which is fabulous!