TekSiDoT
New Member
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- Location
- Munich, Germany
Heya folks,
Even though I was planning to perform some of this stuff with one of my own hard disks when one of them eventually fails, a friend gave me his dying hdd. As he doesn't really expect any of the data to be actually recovered he doesn't mind me playing with it to try a recovery nonetheless.
So, I learned a lot during the past months about harddisk recovery, mainly through posts on this forum and several very interesting articles about hdd recovery, but also through experimenting with some of the tools out there. Still, it's a first try, looking forward to your input/feedback.
It's a 2.5" 250gb Samsung external usb disk. It had been dropped on a soft surface from around two feet, worked for around another month until read/write errors occured, a week after it stopped working entirely and wasn't recognized anymore, not even in BIOS.
Here's the procedure I tried.
1. Checked if it worked with my Laptop via original USB. (fail)
2. Dismantled the enclosure, plugged it into my workbench PC via SATA. Looked it up in BIOS (success). This is when I though: hurray, it's only the USB controller.
3. Booted Win7, tried to copy single files in root (success)
4. Launched Unstoppable Copier to just copy all of the data to another drive. (fail, stopped copying after about 30Mb, froze and crashed). This is where I got suspicious (again) and shutdown windows.
5. Booted Active Boot, tried creating raw image (fail with read errors). Tried chkdsk, ran fine and fixed some errors, ran raw image again, failed again.
6. Booted RIP Linux, tried dd (failed with read errors)
7. Tried dd_rescue within RIP. Let it run for about 24 hours, until then it hat around 2500 read errors, around 1MB of lost data and 1.4gb out of 250gb of imaged data. BUT: this means it would take almost a year to complete. (if the complete hdd is as bad as the first gb)
... this is where I'm at now. So I decided before I let dd_rescue continue and through its long runtime potentially destroy the hdd forever, I'll try the freezer method. I've sealed the harddrive within two folded waterproof bags, and put it in the freezer. I'm planning on creating some sort of "cold resting place" when I take it out again, like letting it run while still in these bags (cut it open to introduce the cables at one place), and put as much ice packs around it as possible.
Any further ideas?
Even though I was planning to perform some of this stuff with one of my own hard disks when one of them eventually fails, a friend gave me his dying hdd. As he doesn't really expect any of the data to be actually recovered he doesn't mind me playing with it to try a recovery nonetheless.
So, I learned a lot during the past months about harddisk recovery, mainly through posts on this forum and several very interesting articles about hdd recovery, but also through experimenting with some of the tools out there. Still, it's a first try, looking forward to your input/feedback.
It's a 2.5" 250gb Samsung external usb disk. It had been dropped on a soft surface from around two feet, worked for around another month until read/write errors occured, a week after it stopped working entirely and wasn't recognized anymore, not even in BIOS.
Here's the procedure I tried.
1. Checked if it worked with my Laptop via original USB. (fail)
2. Dismantled the enclosure, plugged it into my workbench PC via SATA. Looked it up in BIOS (success). This is when I though: hurray, it's only the USB controller.
3. Booted Win7, tried to copy single files in root (success)
4. Launched Unstoppable Copier to just copy all of the data to another drive. (fail, stopped copying after about 30Mb, froze and crashed). This is where I got suspicious (again) and shutdown windows.
5. Booted Active Boot, tried creating raw image (fail with read errors). Tried chkdsk, ran fine and fixed some errors, ran raw image again, failed again.
6. Booted RIP Linux, tried dd (failed with read errors)
7. Tried dd_rescue within RIP. Let it run for about 24 hours, until then it hat around 2500 read errors, around 1MB of lost data and 1.4gb out of 250gb of imaged data. BUT: this means it would take almost a year to complete. (if the complete hdd is as bad as the first gb)
... this is where I'm at now. So I decided before I let dd_rescue continue and through its long runtime potentially destroy the hdd forever, I'll try the freezer method. I've sealed the harddrive within two folded waterproof bags, and put it in the freezer. I'm planning on creating some sort of "cold resting place" when I take it out again, like letting it run while still in these bags (cut it open to introduce the cables at one place), and put as much ice packs around it as possible.
Any further ideas?
