After SpinRite, is drive suddenly "OK" and readable in Windows?

[WAZ]

So SpinRite 6 is now running on my recently-screwed hard drive. At 37% done, it's showing me 3 R's (recovered sectors), 8 U's (unrecovered), none bad, and the other 370 or so are all processed and okay. The error count is currently at 6,413 ECC Corrected, and 17 reallocated events.

For a 160-GB hard drive I'm not sure what those numbers mean, but I'm crossing my fingers a decent amount of data is still recoverable one way or another.

Really my big question is, once SpinRite is done, is that it? The drive is either fixed or not, and I can just pop it open in Windows? Or do I need to back stuff up somewhere or do anything else?

 

[Lord Evermore]

I don't know exactly what SpinRite's numbers indicate either, but it seems it found several bad sectors and was able to recover some of the data, but most of it was unrecoverable in those sectors. The 17 reallocated events indicates that it was able to use the spare sectors that every drive has, in order to mark the bad sectors as unusable without losing any total capacity.

You can run the drive in order to immediately back up your data, but you should not run it for any other reason if it can be avoided. Bad sectors don't usually just happen, something is causing them, and is likely to continue causing more. The more you have the drive running before you back it up, the more likely you are to totally lose the data. After it's backed up, RMA the drive (you may want to zero out the drive, don't know if SpinRite does that, but the manufacturers have software that can do it).

 

[WAZ]

Okay, well I bought another hard drive (SATA) that has my WinXP and everything on it... fresh install, but obviously none of my old data from the bad drive.

So I can just boot up my PC with the bad drive (now "fixed" by SpinRite) hooked up as an IDE slave, and suddenly view it properly in Windows?

I'm 100% fine only accessing it to get my old data backed up, and then I'll RMA or trash the drive.... as long as it's now accessible in Windows. Just wanted to make sure that was the next step after SpinRite.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Yep, it should be perfectly functional that way. However depending on your BIOS, you may need to manually set it to boot from the SATA hard drive first. Some mainboards assign the IDE controller as the "first" in the list of devices, so it will look for a hard drive there first.

 

[tcsenter]

Your drives internal problems are not 'fixed' by SpinRite. If the drive is failing, SpinRite can't do anything about that.

The one thing SpinRite can do is to identify all bad sectors of the drive and mark them as such. Using the most comprehensive maintenance mode (I forget which level #), SpinRite can also detect many marginal sectors that other utilities would not detect or mark as bad. If the drive starts throwing more bad sectors after SpinRite has done its work, its not safe to use. You can periodically check Event Viewer under Administrative Tools to see if more bad sectors are being discovered on the drive.

Your best bet is to move the data to another drive while it is still functioning. Run the manufacturer's drive fitness or diagnostic utility on the drive using the most extensive test level. If it says the drive is good, then use it. Otherwise, the next time you hear those bad noises, it may be the drive totally failing (no worky any more), with all your data on it.

 

[WAZ]

Yeah, I've already come to terms with the fact the drive is probably failing (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...tid=27&threadid=2003354&enterthread=y)... d'oh.

Unfortunately, so far, my problem has been recovering the data. KNOPPIX recognizes both partitions of the "bad" drive, but will only let me mount the second one. I get an input/output error when trying to mount the first partition.

WinXP can also SEE both partitions, but only let me access the second. Trying to view the first sort of locked it up. Also, most software appears to recognize both partitions correctly as NTFS, and the proper sizes.... but Windows Setup sees it as an "Unknown" file system.

So my only reason and hope right now is that SpinRite can fix the drive enough for WinXP to view the C: partition, even if just for a couple hours as a slave drive so I can back up the old data. After that, I'm happily done with this drive and have a new one for future use.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Do a search for data recovery software. That will scan the drive bit by bit, attempting to locate files. It sounds like maybe the partition table is bad, as well as the bad sectors and whatever else may be failing. Recovery software will attempt to read the file table to locate files, and if it can't, then it will try to read bit by bit and recognize file patterns. It's not perfect, but it'll recover some stuff (although without a file table, it just renames every file it finds, but still keeps the extension based on the pattern it sees in the file).

 

[Zepper]

When SR gets done, it will report what files it thinks the unrecoverable sectors belong to. If none are critical, then you should be able to recover most of the data. Whether the drive will be readable in Windows is another question. You might need another piece of software like R-Studio from http://www.r-tt.com to actually recover the data. Keep your fingers crossed...

..bh.

 

[WAZ]

Cool, thanks for the tips guys. I do have some data recovery software ("GetDataBack", I think? maybe a couple freeware ones, too, from when my brother's hard drive crashed on him a while back)... so hopefully one is able to view my important stuff and let me transfer it to my new running drive.

SpinRite was coasting along, appearing as if it had covered the bad sectors near the beginning of the drive and the rest was pretty clear.... then it got stuck on 83% and has been on that for the past 13 hours. It said there were 2 hours left at 9pm last night.... at 11pm it said there was another 1:13 left.... and this morning it was still on the same spot. The sector/head numbers were changing, so it wasn't stuck or locked up.... but man, it's been working on the same cluster for half a day, which can't be good....

 

[Lord Evermore]

Wow, you really are screwed. How full was the drive, and did you keep it defragmented? If the amount of data didn't reach 83% of the space, and was mostly contiguous (all the data at the front of the drive) then you should be able to recover most of them. Recovering it from these bad areas over 83% seems like it's unlikely.

I would suggest you stop running SpinRite at this point. You know the drive is bad, and the longer it's sitting there running those heads over obviously bad areas of the disk, the greater the risk of destroying any data that WOULD be readable, and of damaging the heads. You may only get one shot at reading some of the data, you'd hate for it to be wasted with SpinRite trying to test the sectors 3 times.

 

[WAZ]

Yeah, looks like it's time to stop it..... I gave it through today, and when I got home from work tonight, it was STILL at 83%.... 29 HOURS later (about 20 of those spent on this one sector). It's still on the same sector but has probably read it a million times. My numbers have increased to:

ECC Corrected: 56,909
Reallocated: 251
Cabling Errors (??): 6
Uncorrectable: 4

Dynastat Recovery: 71
556 Not Correctable

Time to head downstairs and shut her down, hoping for the best....

 

[tcsenter]

I've heard of SpinRite taking two days on some drives to complete its thing (40+ hours).

 

[QueBert]

this was an oooooold DOS version of SR, which was slower period. But, I ran it on a 120 meg (meg not gig) drive that was pretty fubar'ed, and it took 4 days, I was able to save a lot of the files. the new SR 6 is blazing fast, it scanned 400 gigs of HD on my new box faster then the first version took to scan my 30 meg drive.

SR is an awesome peice of software, nothing better for what it does.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: QueBert
SR is an awesome peice of software, nothing better for what it does.

That is ture! I have used SR since version 1 on a floppy. We're now up to version 6 on a bootable CD. The first thing I do with a new drive after formatting, etc., is to run SR6 and establish a baseline.

 

[WAZ]

And... super. Windows can recognize the drive, but not let me open the partition in My Computer without freezing up.

GetDataBack froze before it could do anything, and R-Studio STARTED to pull files via the "Recover All Files" option (which made me very happy as I started to see my destination folder fill up with files from my bad drive)....

But I let it run overnight, and when I came down in the morning, it had locked up -- probably spent 8 hours stuck on one file -- and my whole computer was frozen.

%$^%$#%$!!!!!!!

 

[Zepper]

Once spinRite has finished, you have to delete (or replace with good copies from your BACKUPs or original disks ) the files it listed with unrecoverable sectors! Other programs CANT go past the unreadable sectors. If you end SR before it's done and you don't have a list of the files with bad sectors, well... It also sounds like you have some defective hardware - perhaps the HDD cable or poor connection. Replace with a known-good cable and make sure the connections are solid. Then try SR again.
- if you're lucky it might pick up where it left off. SR is supposed to be good about that.
.bh.

 

[WAZ]

Yeah, SR did give me the percentage it had finished to 4 decimal places (like 83.2640%) and said I could resume from there. Do you think running R-Studio data recovery attempts a couple of times have screwed up anything SR had done? i.e. do I need to restart it, or can I start from the 83% mark despite having tried to access it a couple times?

Guess I'll have to let SR run for 3 more days if I want it to finish.... d'oh.

 

[Zepper]

No proper data recovery program will write to the source drive - it only reads that and writes the recovered data to a different drive target. At least that's how it's supposed to work...

..bh.

 

[WAZ]

Well that's encouraging at least.

I'll boot SR back up this weekend and let it run... see what kind of report I get at the end. Hopefully letting it run in its entirety -- even if that's 50 hours -- will help me get my stuff back....

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: WAZ
Well that's encouraging at least.

I'll boot SR back up this weekend and let it run... see what kind of report I get at the end. Hopefully letting it run in its entirety -- even if that's 50 hours -- will help me get my stuff back....

SR 6 gives a warning message if the drive is about to fail, bad sectors are serious, but not always a sign the drive will be dead in 2 days. I had a Western Digital go bad on my last year, I ran SR and the first screen was a big red one that said "this drive is in immediate failure of dying, don't run SpinRite on it if you need to recover data. just try to xfer the date off it quickly" I'm not sure how it came to that exact conclusion but I was very worried, so I ran it on the important partition with my mp3's. Mind you the message SR was giving it

it took one overnight of running, I ended up saving all but 4 single mp3's, and a few ISO's I had ripped from DVD for games I didn't want to have to mess with everytime I wanted to play. I have 20,000+ mp3's, so to only loose about 4 on a 250 gig drive was a god send. Especially when pre-SR it looked like it was going to be a huge loss (80%+)

Hopefully you can have similar results.

back in the days Spinrite & Xtree were my 2 favorite utilities. SR is still bad ass

 

[Lord Evermore]

The SMART status messages are most likely what causes SpinRite to give that warning. Dell machines (and maybe others) will stop you from booting up until you hit a button to acknowledge a warning if the drive's SMART status is bad.

 

[WAZ]

Yeah, I got the big red "drive is ready to die" message on the second try. SR made it from 83% to 85% in about 16 more hours.... at this pace it will take another 5 days, running 24 hours a day to finish. :Q

I have little choice but to let it finish, as I can't get R-Studio to fully work on it. R-Studio has been promising (it did get 600+ MB of stuff off of it before it locked up -- but that 600 MB contained almost nothing important... d'oh). But I need it to run without locking up if there's any prayer of recovering stuff.... and to do that, I guess SR needs to finish.

Would I be safe skipping any percentages? Like if I interrupt SR on 85% (where it's been sitting for half a day), could I resume it at 86% -- effectively ignoring the sectors that are taking ages (and coming up with 700+ uncorrectable and only ONE recovered)... and see if it takes off a little?

 

[WAZ]

Anybody have experience skipping percentages? It was taking about 12 hours on 85% (wasn't locked up -- was making progress, just very, VERY slowly, taking forever on each byte -- took 8 hours to do 2 MB). I had to interrupt it as I work from home and can't have my PC occupied for 5 days solid, day and night, running SR.

Would I be safe starting SR back up at 86% and skipping whatever it WAS working on?

 

[WAZ]

bump

 

[Bob Anderson]

If SpinRite takes 8 hours to do 2 MB, then the drive is toast, and no software can help you. Go to 86% and continue, but you can never trust that drive again.

Sorry.

-Bob