any way to bring hard drive back to life ?

[wpshooter]

I was WIPING the hard drive that I use on my computer that I use for testing the beta versions of Ubuntu and the WIPING process froze at 25% completed and would not go any further, so I had to hard restart machine and every since I have not been able to get BIOS or anything else to recognize the drive.

Is there any utility that I might use in the outside hope of getting this drive to work ? There is nothing on the drive of any importance, so that is not an issue.

What I am wondering is if somehow the WIPING program just left the drive in a state that makes the BIOS unable to recognize it or is it that the drive has just gone complete south !!!

Just sort of a challenge to see if I can get it to work again.

Thanks.

 

[Modelworks]

Probably corrupted the drive, shouldn't be any permanent damage unless the wiping program did a true low level format, not many do .
Try the dos version of the drive software by the drives manufacturer and see if it can restore the drive.

 

[wpshooter]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Probably corrupted the drive, shouldn't be any permanent damage unless the wiping program did a true low level format, not many do .
Try the dos version of the drive software by the drives manufacturer and see if it can restore the drive.

Yes, I already tried Seatools with the drive and the Seatools software could not see the drive.

Is there a program/command that I can use to low level format the drive or can this only be done by Seagate ?

Thanks.

 

[taltamir]

it is possible that the drive failed during wiping... meaning that it is physically broken.

 

[Modelworks]

If you used seatools (dos version) and it cannot see the drive then there is probably little that can be done .

There are programs like spinrite but they are not free or cheap.
I would just rma if you can.

 

[Russwinters]

Spinrite kills drives; never use it

There really is no such thing a "true" LLF


There is "Wiping" which is just writing 0s to all sectors



What kind of drive is it?


If seatools doesn't see it, I suspect that the drive either:


Had a firmware failure during operation


Had a Mechanical failure during operation



Does it make any sounds now? Does it spin up at all? Do you hear the heads unload?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Russwinters
Spinrite kills drives; never use it

That's incorrect information

 

[taltamir]

There really is no such thing a "true" LLF

In new drivers that is...
Drives made in the past 10 years are at such a level of minaturization that they can no longer write their own tracks. Specialized hardware writes the tracks into platters before the drives are assembled, if the track data is gone, then the drive can not recreate it with its heads.
read up on it in wikipedia.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
If you used seatools (dos version) and it cannot see the drive then there is probably little that can be done .

I agree with that. Seagate's tools get about as low-level as you can get with software. If their diagnostics tools can't see the drive, then you are out of luck. Assuming that there's not a problem with the disk controller or the cabling.

 

[Russwinters]

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: Russwinters
Spinrite kills drives; never use it

That's incorrect information

Maybe you would like to make a good argument as to why it doesn't kill drives?


Now, I am not saying its going to sure shot kill any drive you put on it, but there is a reason that I make this claim, and I have seen many drives in my lab that have failed because the customer was attempting to use spinrite to recover there drives, this is also true for DD rescue.


1 parameter. Retries. Spinrite does not understand retries. It will retry a sector 99 times before it moves to the next.

If you have a drive with a weak or failing head/s. It will surely give out way before the drive gets done copying.

 

[Russwinters]

There has been no real LLF for well more then 10 years.


Early 90s maybe, but I don't believe even then (would need to do my homework on that)




Servo is what you speak of, and it has been used since ~1992, if not before.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Russwinters
There has been no real LLF for well more then 10 years.
Early 90s maybe, but I don't believe even then (would need to do my homework on that)

Conner was an early maker of EIDE drives with servo motors. I spent some time on the phone with a Conner Support person around 1990 and he told me that I couldn't low-level-format my new $1000 200 MegaByte disk.

 

[Old Hippie]

Retries. Spinrite does not understand retries. It will retry a sector 99 times before it moves to the next.

This is always what I've read but I see many recommened it for all data recovery situations.

I never understood why anyone would think that flogging a failing drive with constant scanning could be good.

I have seen successful recovery stories and always assumed that the data recovery was from bad sectors and the drive was mechanically sound.

Looks like the trick is to successfully diagnose if the drive has mechanical or electronic problems?

 

[Absolution75]

the real question is why would you ever trust a drive that strangely dissapeared from diagnostic tools/the os/bios?

RMA it if its in warrenty, you didn't do anything to kill the drive, unless you phsyically kicked your pc while you were formating it.




And spinrite has never worked for me. There was a part of my drive that couldn't be read - it didn't fix it, actually just froze on that part of the disk. I lost about 2 mp3's, boo hoo.
Pretty sure that is consistant with bad sectors.

 

[Russwinters]

Originally posted by: Old Hippie

Retries. Spinrite does not understand retries. It will retry a sector 99 times before it moves to the next.

This is always what I've read but I see many recommened it for all data recovery situations.

I never understood why anyone would think that flogging a failing drive with constant scanning could be good.

I have seen successful recovery stories and always assumed that the data recovery was from bad sectors and the drive was mechanically sound.

Looks like the trick is to successfully diagnose if the drive has mechanical or electronic problems?

This.

Imagine spinrite as medicine, and your hard drive as a patient.


The patient comes in and says, my chest hurts.

Would a GOOD doctor just say" Oh ok, here is some aspirin, go home you will be fine"

or would a doctor say "Ok, let me listen to your chest, ok lets take some xrays"


Same thing with a heard drive. Don't give your drive medicine until you can make a educated assumption of what the problem is.

Proper diagnosis is the first step, the more you run the drive the higher risk you have of causing more problems. Diagnose, then extract quickly, and safely.



note: Spinrite is likely safer then just using a drive as an external and pulling data off of it through windows (if you are fortunate enough for it to even identify in windows)

this is because if files a heavily fragmented the drive has to work even hard because files are written all over the place, and it will do many "butterfly mode" operations to read each file.

This is why an "imager" such as spinrite or DD image are slightely prefferable because they disregard the files and read on a bit level, from sector 0-end no matter what.

The problem with spinrite and DD image are that they do not know how to properly work with damaged drives, they don't have correct error handling, and proper power cycling.

 

[RebateMonger]

Like any other software, if you can't get the PC to recognize the disk, Spinrite can't see it either.

If you manage to get the drive to be recognized (if it's a bad PCB, you might try chilling it in a freezer), then do whatever works to get the important data off the disk as quickly as possible. Do NOT run disk diagnostics or repair software. Copy off the data you need, starting with the most important files first and working your way down the list. Don't copy Windows, applications, games, etc. Get the stuff you can't afford to lose. You don't know how long the drive will keep working.