Internal SATA Hard drive wont initialize

[Pesk]

Have an internal 2TB Sata Segate hard drive on the bench. Hard drive appears to spin is recognised by computer management in control panel, but says disk needs to be initialized. Try to initialize and guess what? I get an error "Data error (Cylic Redundancy Check)"

I right click and cant format. I have tried booting with Ubuntu, UBD, KillDisk and have tried software tools EaseUS Data Recovery, Power Data Recovery, Mini Tool Partition Wizard are just some to name a few.

Has anyone experienced this? and if so were you able to find a work around?

Thanking you all in advance.

 

[glricht]

Sounds like a bad HD. If it's new, return it under warranty. If used, trash it.

 

[lcoughey]

I'm confused, are you trying to set it up as a new drive or trying to recover data off an existing drive?

If you need to get the data recovered from the drive, you probably should call a data recovery professional to discuss the best course of action, which is likely to send it in for a free assessment. It could be a single bad sector at the front of the drive, but is more likely at least one weak or crashing read/write head. The more you power it on and attempt to read the drive, the more damage you could be causing.

If you don't need the data off the drive, just send it back to Seagate for an RMA replacement.

 

[Pesk]

Yeah it has data on it that I was trying to recover. It's for a friend, and he has some photos he would like to try and get off it. I believe he had quotes from data recovery services and was in excess of 1K so asked if I could take a look. I'm coming to my witts end and think I might have to give up. A search on the forums here came up with some people having the same problem but dosn't look like they got a result either.

Thanks for your suggestions, they are well appreciated.

 

[compnet]

You may think you are doing a favor, but randomly trying everything under the sun could cause the data to become unrecoverable, or considerably more costly to recover.

If you can't determine wether the hard drive is failing logically or physically you need to let someone else take over.

I don't know how much it would be to ship internationally or if 300 dollar data recovery accepts international, but I would check it out if money is the issue. Maybe some of the aussies here can point you in the direction of cheaper data recovery out there.

 

[PCS]

Image to 2nd hdd and run chkdsk or spinrite and save the original incase it needs to go to recovery.

 

[phaZed]

Never Initialize a disk you wish to try to recover data from. Period.

 

[lcoughey]

Yeah it has data on it that I was trying to recover. It's for a friend, and he has some photos he would like to try and get off it. I believe he had quotes from data recovery services and was in excess of 1K so asked if I could take a look. I'm coming to my witts end and think I might have to give up. A search on the forums here came up with some people having the same problem but dosn't look like they got a result either.

Thanks for your suggestions, they are well appreciated.

I imagine that if the lab is quoting over $1000, then it is likely a physical issue that you won't be able to handle on your own.

As was already mentioned, don't ever write to a drive that you are trying to recover from. Always start with a full sector-by-sector clone. If you cannot do get the clone, you will need to seek the assistance of a professional lab that can.

 

[300DDR]

What is the hard drive's model? Was it dropped?

I imagine that if the lab is quoting over $1000, then it is likely a physical issue that you won't be able to handle on your own.

Personally, I hesitate to jump to the conclusion that it's a physical issue so quickly, after recovering so many drives for clients who were quoted $1000-$2500 from clean rooms that ended up not having a physical issue (like a bad head or motor). Especially since most of these companies give that high-range-quote before they even see the drive and often without asking the model number.

That said, I agree that it's probably not something compnet can handle on their own (without the necessary data recovery tools)... although one last possibility is trying something like ddrescue from a linux boot cd, which is the best and last thing available to try.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Last week I had a customer bring me their hard drive, saying they were quoted $1,200 by a local DR company--a fairly large company I was going to refer clients to when/if clean room work was required. The DR company described how a donor had to be found, platters swapped in a clean room, etc. They told the DR company they'd get a second opinion. I repaired a shorted TVS diode and they were on their way for $150+tax. It's no wonder people and techs are skeptical of DR companies.

Edit: Oh yeah, 10-years-worth of precious family photos recovered.

 

[300DDR]

Yea, seems like clean room companies are really slacking lately (no offense Luke I know your company is good!)... we got 2 this month that we "not recoverable" by BIG data recovery companies, we recovered both of them. One was sent to us from a member of this forum.

It just goes to show: a clean room's diagnosis cannot be trusted. Or at least, ALWAYS get a second opinion!

 

[Pesk]

Thanks Larry Sabo and 300DDR. I have had similar previous experiences as yourselves hence why the drive was given to me. I just want to point out, and I should have been clear in my original post. I had test the drive for physical malfunctions and have run the manufacturer testing software. I didn't just get the drive and 'randomly' try to recover data from it as previously mentioned.

I am going to clone the drive hopefully today. I will run a sector by sector clone and see how that goes.

Thanks to everyone for their input. Much appreciated.