1.5tb crash - Retrieval

[amstos]

Hi, 



My 1.5tb Seagate hardisk suddenly stop showing the 1.3tb datas inside. It happend like this. My 1.5TB sata harddisk was connected to my MacBookPro through an USB external casing. Suddenly accessing of HDD became slower and slower. So, i ejected it and tried starting the external casing Power again. Again it was slower. So i switched it off for a while and again turned on. 



The harddisk got detected normally, but shockingly, none of the files of 1.3TB were seen. It was completely blank. I even tried to create a folder on the blank space, but it cant be done. 



I took the Sata hdd to a authorized recovery center (Steller). They said it is a physical damage and so they will charge Rs.40,000 and still recovery of data is not 100% sure. I took it to another center, there they connected my HDD to a computer and run some software and they were able to see the datas that i had deleted (sitting on the Recycle bin cache). But nothing much.



So, now can anyone of you guys suggest me some options, were-in i can myself try it. I have a Workstation Desktop PC and a laptop and am somewhat familiar with hardware repairing. With this, can i try recovering. 

I appreciate your time. 



-Amstos

 

[ElenaP]

Because the data recovery center told you that the drive has some physical damage, you should to create a disk image file (many of data recovery software are able to do this). You will need 1.5TB of free space to hold the image. Also, this is best done if you attach the SATA HDD to your desktop workstation directly to the motherboard.
Then, try to recover your data using data recovery software which can work with Mac filesystems (it is unlikely you have FAT32 on the drive)

 

[Emulex]

i've found that 99% of the failures on seagates[externals] are bad power supplies and bad usb/esata cables (those white ones are poop).

if you did not use force to damage the drive. yes even walking by heavily or subwoofer will damage the drive - when it is in use - then that is likely the problem.

the freeagent - silver one with sloped nose. the white cable is so poor i had tons of that scenario until i busted out a shorter thicker(better shielded) cable.

It also has to do with bus power - mac folks think that pluggin a mouse and drive into their keyboard is cool because they can but that drive is using the USB power for its bridge controller - and power does sag on ports that are over burdened; underpowering a drive can make it freak out.

It's really common with old ICH7 mobo's you plug in 2 drives or 3 devices to a port group and the drive trips out like that. you have the drive by itself;with a good cable and its 100% solid.

I was about to rma a dozen drives until i realized this. i got a separate (rosewill!) usb card for the drive; a quality cable; and keep the drive on a gel mouse pad that absorbs vibrations and have had zero errors ever since.

We did long formats on a laptop - 100% perfect; put them into production and from 0 minutes to days - the drives would corrupt - i was like hell no this can't be for real we just did a 24+ hour long windows format on it and it was flawless.

i also just got back from a customer a dead freeagent. the brick was dead - humming - grabbed one of my dozen extra bricks and threw it on and it was flawless no errors ; no smart issues; nothing.

 

[Elixer]

Hi, 


I took the Sata hdd to a authorized recovery center (Steller). They said it is a physical damage and so they will charge Rs.40,000 and still recovery of data is not 100% sure. I took it to another center, there they connected my HDD to a computer and run some software and they were able to see the datas that i had deleted (sitting on the Recycle bin cache). But nothing much.



So, now can anyone of you guys suggest me some options, were-in i can myself try it. I have a Workstation Desktop PC and a laptop and am somewhat familiar with hardware repairing. With this, can i try recovering. 

I appreciate your time. 



-Amstos

If one shop says it has physical damage, I assume they meant internally ? If so, (and you trust the shop) then each time you access it, the less and less chance you have of recovering anything.

I would have (tried) to mirror the data as was mentioned, and then try testdisk, but I am unsure if that will work with mac stuff.

 

[amstos]

Hi ElenaP. "many of data recovery software are able to do this" - can you list a few which you had tested and found working fine)

Hi Elixer. "I would have (tried) to mirror the data as was mentioned, and then try testdisk, but I am unsure if that will work with mac stuff". I have Windows computer also, so i can give it a shot. Do you know any softwares which mirrors the data.

 

[Blain]

Boot from a Knoppix LiveCD and see if you can access the files that way.

 

[joetekubi]

Boot from a Knoppix LiveCD and see if you can access the files that way.

It's important to mount the drive read only.
Every time something is written to the drive increases the chance of
losing more data.

So boot a Lunix Live CD with the drive attached - doesn't matter if it is
mb attached or usb attached. don't mount the drive at this time.

Your first task is to determine if the partition record(s) is ok.
fdisk -l /dev/sdx will show all the partitions.

If you've got bad sectors, "dd" won't help - but "dd_rescue" was designed
to skip bad sectors and read what it can. You will need a blank disk to hold the recovered files.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

The following is mostly for Linux ext3 file systems, but has some good advice.

http://www.easywebdns.com/tutorials/Linux/Recovering_an_ext3_hard_disk

-joe

 

[ElenaP]

R-Studio, ZAR, and our ReclaiMe.

The trial version of any of these can create and use a disk image file. The menu command to create the image is typically somewhat hidden, you need to either right click a disk (R-Studio and ZAR), or click the down arrow next to the Disks button (ReclaiMe).