DIY Data Recovery

[imported_Kane]

My main 120 GB Western Digital SE ATA100 HDD started making clicking noises and now it intermittantly works. It seems that when I R&R the cables it starts working normally so I just thought it had a bad molex connector or round cable. Disk management reported healthy drives, however there were some corrupted files which chkdsk /r/p repaired.

The tax deadline is just around the corner and....um...."someone" did not backup their 2003 data files. Since the drive is not dead, anyone know what are the proper procedures for data recovery. I know I just have one chance so I don't want to make a mistake. Any helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[FlyingPenguin]

If it's clicking, you suffered a disk crash. The more you use it, the worse it will get. Connect it as a spare on another computer and copy the data off it as quick as you can. You may only get a few minutes to work with it at a time and them have to reboot to reset it.

Try not to run any disk intensive operations on it like a scandisk or defrag - it'll only make it worse.

Good luck.

 

[nanaki333]

just go to download.com or google and search for data recovery. tons of stuff out there that'll get your stuff back. i love easy recovery. it's my fav.

if it's clicking, he suffered hardware failure which obviously leads to a disk crash.

i would say the bets thing to do is put that drive in an enclosure and work off of it that way to get your shat back.

 

[imported_Kane]

Thank you for all of your helpful suggestions.

 

[imported_Kane]

Originally posted by: nanaki333
just go to download.com or google and search for data recovery. tons of stuff out there that'll get your stuff back. i love easy recovery. it's my fav.

if it's clicking, he suffered hardware failure which obviously leads to a disk crash.

i would say the bets thing to do is put that drive in an enclosure and work off of it that way to get your shat back.

I actually did a search for data recovery on google prior to posting here, but just got a long list of software to recover/undelete files from vendors who wish to sell their software or platter recovery which is big $$$$$. Thus, I turned to Anandtech with helpful members like you 24/7.

My external USB 2.0/IEEE1394 enclosure runs rather hot and doesn't seem to shut down properly when I shut down the computer so I think it crashes the drive head whenever I switch the enclosure off. Would this be still adviseable when compared to adding the failing HHD to a desktop computer which could be properly park the drive head?

 

[montag451]

spinrite6 - recommended
getdataback - good
recover4all
recoverypro2000

to name but a few.


If the external drive is running hot, then that would be a good enough reason to put it in a case with cooling [internal or external]

 

[imported_Kane]

Originally posted by: montag451
spinrite6 - recommended
getdataback - good
recover4all
recoverypro2000

to name but a few.


If the external drive is running hot, then that would be a good enough reason to put it in a case with cooling [internal or external]

Thank you for your suggestion. I have spinrite and recoverypro.

 

[imported_Kane]

I connected the crashed drive to my second IDE channel and the computer tries to boot from it. The drive is set to slave and one the middle connector on a round cable. I changed to a ribbon cable and a 3rd IDE channel with the same results.

The drive was then placed in my external USB2.0/IEEE1394 enclosure and when connected a blue screen pops up saying something like windows has been stopped to prevent damage to my computer......ntfs.sys...

I also noticed that the drive no longer makes the clicking sound and it can be heard spinning as normal.

Any suggestions??