Hard drive recovery

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

My work laptop completely failed. I have yet to talk to our IT yet, but we're a small company, so not much resources. By fail I mean Windows just halted on me today. Rebooted and it took forever. Didn't sound like a click of death but Windows took forever to load. Rebooted again and I BSOD.

It was 7pm so I took my laptop home and I plugged the SATA drive into my computer as a secondary drive. I figure if things are screwed up and Windows can't boot, I at least try it out on my desktop.

Problem is the drive seems to be toast. It makes 1 loud click when trying to access and then my whole system halts. My Computer freezes up, I can't even click on the drive. I've dealt with bad laptop drives and DeathStars, and usually you can still access them even though if you boot on them they become terribly unstable. At least I get a chance to pull some data off (and touching certain sectors invokes the click of death).

I've also dealt with drives where data just gets corrupted and maybe you get that format error stuff, and I use recovery programs like GetDataBack to pull stuff off.

However, this drive looks toast where another system can't even access it. So what options are there now? I imagine those typical data recovery shops isn't going to help either where they really just plug your drive into some device, which is like plugging into my computer an then pulling all the data off. I'm sure there are more advanced recovery services that deal with like maybe disassembling the drives and replacing parts and that could have a chance, but I'm quite sure my company ain't paying for that. Plus, my loss isn't that substantial.

Obviously I'll go talk to the IT guy tomorrow, but I was figuring I could get some of my local files off tonight onto a flash drive at least, but looks like this will be tough.

Before I go to bed I intend to try the freezer trick.

 

[Russwinters]

Please don't try the freezer trick....If the data is important it is high risk, low chance of reward.


What brand/model is the drive?



I can probably take a look at it for you; I am a Data Recovery tech at a Socal DR company.

You can PM me if you would like more information.



Regards,

 

[Anubis]

if the drive will still spin and works mechanically get data back should work
http://www.runtime.org/

ive used it to save my ass before, great little program

 

[RebateMonger]

Please don't try the freezer trick....If the data is important it is high risk, low chance of reward.

Question for you, Russwinters:

I've always assumed that the "freezer trick" is mainly useful when the problem is overheating PCB components. Or, maybe, an overheating bearing.

Any insights on this?

Thanks,

RebateMonger

 

[Russwinters]

You are correct; the freezer trick actually got really "popular" back when the fujitsu MPG series drives where failing en mass. The particular failure was caused by an overheating CPU so the freezer would allow the drive to work.


The other logic to putting a drive in the freezer is that you are changing the parameters of the drive (due to swelling). Sometimes the act of changing this can cause the drive to return to operation for a short period of time; the problem is that condensation is going to build up whether you like it or not; even putting it in a bag isn't going to help you completely.

Even a small droplet of water can damage a head if it crashes into the droplet. The heads on modern drives fly at ~4-5nm away from the surface. This is so close that even some of the larger bacteria are taller then this distance. So you can see why if the heads hit a droplet of water it could be damaging to them.

It has been proven that on VERY specific drives the freezer can help. Specifically older WD desktop drives (maybe years 2003 and earlier) it could magically bring them back to life. This can be attributed to the changes that occur (mentioned above). Also, the flying height of the read heads tends to increase slightly when in cooler temperatures. The read heads perform better when at a higher flying height (they are able to interpret the magnetic flux changes better) of course this is limited to a certain height (maybe no more the 6nm)

Heads actually have an element built into the that allows them to heat up to move closer to the platters (for writing) and then it will disable this heating element to cool down and fly higher for reading.

This heating is controlled by a chip called the preamplifier that is located on a small PCB that is attached to the ARM of the HSA (Head stack assembly)



For most drive putting it in a freezer will do little good. Only specific drives have shown a CONSISTENT improvement running in the freezer

note: never take the drive out of the freezer and THEN run it. run it IN the freezer (run some cables in there, and run it inside.


Hopefully this finally clears up some things about putting the drive in the freezer; I felt like I should just answer it in full for once so that I can just copy paste this if anyone else asks

If you have any questions don't be afraid to post here, or PM me and I will be happy to answer them


Regards,

 

[RebateMonger]

Thanks for your valuable comments, Russwinters.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

if the drive will still spin and works mechanically get data back should work
http://www.runtime.org/

ive used it to save my ass before, great little program

Yeah I've gotten data off my Deathstars like this, but I can't even access the drive when I hook it up to my system as a secondary drive. When you open My computer it typically checks the drives quickly for some basic info, even if they aren't formatted. however in doing so just causes my system to hang. I'm guessing the comp can't even connect to the drive to get any data off.

I do hear a click when it accesses the drive, and then the active window (My Computer) goes frozen for a bit. The process repeats when the window comes back and you click on the drive itself. I'm guessing physical failure here. Happened to one of my SDHC cards after a long day of photography, and I was beyond disappointed. Corrupted partition tables I can deal with, but physical failure is usually SOL.