spinrite

[jcmuse]

my hdd just died on me. It spins put clicks really loud. i can't load windows off it. I'm thinking of buying spinrite but have some questions for those that have used it.
as i understand, ill be able to isntall it on anotehr computer and make a bootable cd iso so i can boot the recovery utility. from there, what does it do with the recovered files on the bad hdd? I have another hdd, can i tell it to copy the files there?

also any other suggestions before i buy this program is appreciated. all i have tried is booting winternels ERD which wasn't able to get at the data.

 

[Jeff7]

Does the PC detect the hard drive at all?

Spinrite does sector-by-sector recovery, and it puts all recovered data elsewhere on the drive.

When you say that Winternals ERD "wasn't able to get at the data" - what do you mean exactly? Did it not see the hard drive? Or could it see the drive but not access anything on it?


What brand and model is this hard drive?

 

[Quiksilver]

Last time i checked you were not able to recover data off a "dead" HDD (Dead in quotes for if it has mechanical problems and cannot be detected in windows or bios) so software would be useless to try to recover it. Anyway, to recover that drive you would actually have to give it to a specialist do take the data off, which is expensive.

 

[jcmuse]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Does the PC detect the hard drive at all?

Spinrite does sector-by-sector recovery, and it puts all recovered data elsewhere on the drive.

When you say that Winternals ERD "wasn't able to get at the data" - what do you mean exactly? Did it not see the hard drive? Or could it see the drive but not access anything on it?


What brand and model is this hard drive?

yes, the PC detects the drive (detected in bios).

yeah, winterals was kind of acting funny. it was really slow for one and when i tried to open the drive it would just freeze up. It started showing part of one my partition (showed like 6 folders) but then just froze up.

with spinrite...what if it runs out of space elsewhere on the drive? Does spinrite usually take a long time. i read it can take days. if it finds a bad sector, how long does it take to give up and go to another one?

thx for the reply

 

[Bob Anderson]

Originally posted by: jcmuse

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Does the PC detect the hard drive at all?

Spinrite does sector-by-sector recovery, and it puts all recovered data elsewhere on the drive.

When you say that Winternals ERD "wasn't able to get at the data" - what do you mean exactly? Did it not see the hard drive? Or could it see the drive but not access anything on it?


What brand and model is this hard drive?

yes, the PC detects the drive (detected in bios).

yeah, winterals was kind of acting funny. it was really slow for one and when i tried to open the drive it would just freeze up. It started showing part of one my partition (showed like 6 folders) but then just froze up.

with spinrite...what if it runs out of space elsewhere on the drive? Does spinrite usually take a long time. i read it can take days. if it finds a bad sector, how long does it take to give up and go to another one?

thx for the reply

--------------------------

Spinrite comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, meaning no questions asked.

Spinrite may take a very long time (days) to fix it if it is really hosed. Then again, you might find it fixes it completly so that you can retrieve and copy all your data.

I'd go the spinrite route. If it can't fix it, get a refund. Then you have no other choice but to go to a specialist recovery company.

-Bob

 

[Jeff7]

Spinrite can take a damn long time, like several days if there are a lot of bad sectors.


Try R-studio. They've got a demo version that only recovers files up to 64KB each. See if it can find anything on the drive.

 

[Tegeril]

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data...ESSID=9333dbdc2176c60d607f5ee862026789

We use this where I work - humongous University. It works amazingly well.

 

[jcmuse]

thx.
my main question is how is it going to write back the recovered data to a bad hdd? not to mention the size of data on the hdd exceeds the available space. i read r-studio puts the recovered data into an image file... does spinrite do this? did i mentioned the hdd clicks?

 

[IdaGno]

jcmuse: I believe you are somewhat confused re the status of the data on your HD and what SpinRite does.

Consider these two scenarios.

1.) In the "write to HD process", no data is written to bad sectors, so there is, obviously, no data to be lost.

2.) Data is written to the HD & then becomes unreadable when that sector later goes bad, so the data appears lost. In this case, it's actually still there.

What SpinRite does is repair the bad sector, whether empty or w/data already written to it. That was my experience anyway. Data long ago written to a sector which went bad & therefore became unreadable, all of sudden became accessible again.

Hope that helps.

BTW, the SpinRite floppy is a recovery disc. Just stick it in the floppy drive & you're good to go. My version is from 1997, so I can't speak for how the latest version works, but I would think it's the same.

 

[Tegeril]

What DataRescue does is scour the contents of the entire drive, analyze what it has found, recovers old/lost/deleted files, and then copies them to a different volume. It is a bootable CD.

 

[jcmuse]

thanks guys. i think i'm going to go with datarescue. What it says makes a lot of sense:
"Other utilities can cause more damage to your hard drive and files by trying to 'fix' the problem, instead of focusing on recovering your files. Do not use a repair utility until you've safely recovered your important files over to a safe location. Data Rescue II should be your first option to recover your important data, before you try any risky "repair" utility."

i don't think i have a lot of time left with this drive so i'd like to get what i can as quickly as possible. i certainly have no interest in repairing the drive... i'm dumping it when i get what i want off it. +1 for good advertising.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: jcmuse
thanks guys. i think i'm going to go with datarescue. What it says makes a lot of sense:
"Other utilities can cause more damage to your hard drive and files by trying to 'fix' the problem, instead of focusing on recovering your files. Do not use a repair utility until you've safely recovered your important files over to a safe location. Data Rescue II should be your first option to recover your important data, before you try any risky "repair" utility."

i don't think i have a lot of time left with this drive so i'd like to get what i can as quickly as possible. i certainly have no interest in repairing the drive... i'm dumping it when i get what i want off it. +1 for good advertising.

That's all that R-studio does too. It just reads the drive very carefully. You will want an additional hard drive to write the recovered data to though.

Just note that if this is a head crash in progress, any use of the drive will cause further damage. When I had a head crash, it was easy to tell - the drive made a horrible squealing and scraping sound, as the heads just scraped across the platters as they spun. That drive was a lost cause. Interestingly enough, it was also my backup drive.