DDRescue Issue

[Vicenarian]

Well, this isn't a current job, but one in the past:

Had a customer come in with a dead HDD. Wouldn't mount in Windows/Linux or anything. It would show in the BIOS, but that's about it.

However, when I would run Clonezilla or DDRescue, it would always hang at the loading screen...something about not being able to access the device or something (can't remember exactly now), and I think showed some weird hex codes or something. I tried running DDRescue with a couple of different switches. One was to stop it from trying to mount the drive, but it still failed.

Anyway, was there anything else I missed? Drive ended up being sent to a pro data recovery firm, from what the customer told me.

 

[Marius]

1) Could be your first sector is damaged...Try a program called Hard Disk Regenerator ( Paid Version )
2) Could also be "stuck Platters"...
Solution
======
If you spend more than 2 hours trying to "enter" the disk after using Disk-Repair tools, get a new drive...Here is a list of all Hiren's Boot CD Apps...See which tool you need, enter it in GOOGLE and search for the name...its freeware --->

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
...I would suggest getting HDAT2
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

 

[codegreen]

It's hard to say without more details, like the exact error messages and the ddrescue switches used.

 

[Larry Sabo]

A Seagate 7200.11 with firmware corruption, by any chance? see this and this article for background and repair procedures.