Hard Drive Issue

[Robin Bignall]

After careful and long consideration (15 or 20 seconds) I came up with
"Chkdsk Chocolate".

I suspect almost anybody can come up with a better one than that

I'm almost anybody, so how about "Head crash Delight"? Just the thing
for that snowy day when the heating has packed up, your wife has run off
with the milkman, the children have all caught measles and the dog ate
your credit cards.

 

[Wildman]

After careful and long consideration (15 or 20 seconds) I came up with
"Chkdsk Chocolate".

I suspect almost anybody can come up with a better one than that

How about Seagate Swirl?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I'm almost anybody, so how about "Head crash Delight"? Just the thing
for that snowy day when the heating has packed up, your wife has run off
with the milkman, the children have all caught measles and the dog ate
your credit cards.

Your sig says you're from Hertfordshire, but I now suspect you're
actually an expatriate Country & Western songwriter ;-)

Head Crash Delight is good - it has a dying fall. If ice cream be the
food of love, and so on...

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

How about Seagate Swirl?

LOL!

Yep, it's good.

 

[Wildman]

I'm almost anybody, so how about "Head crash Delight"? Just the thing
for that snowy day when the heating has packed up, your wife has run off
with the milkman, the children have all caught measles and the dog ate
your credit cards.

The only thing you left out is... and I'm out of beer!

 

[folksy73]

"charlie" wrote in message

Excellent idea - thanks!

The only problem is finding an exactly identical HD!
There is a fair chance that the the substitute electronics
on the same model are only partially compatible, which can result in
partial or total data loss. The logical/physical mapping is just one issue.

Hopefully I'm not too late jumping in. I had a problem years ago. I used a
program called filescavenger. Go to
http://download.cnet.com/File-Scavenger-Data-Recovery-Utility/3000-2094_4-10028488.html
Very successful. Definitely get an external enclosure and plug it into a
working computer. If any program can do it this one can.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

After careful and long consideration (15 or 20 seconds) I came up with
"Chkdsk Chocolate".

I suspect almost anybody can come up with a better one than that

Status report: you guys are creative.

Thank heavens Usenet can still be fun

 

[Bob I]

I'm almost anybody, so how about "Head crash Delight"? Just the thing
for that snowy day when the heating has packed up, your wife has run off
with the milkman, the children have all caught measles and the dog ate
your credit cards.

I was thinking Deskstar Delite, (so many of them smoked we called them
DeathStar). Could make Baked Alaska, perhaps?

 

[Drew]

I was thinking Deskstar Delite, (so many of them smoked we called them
DeathStar). Could make Baked Alaska, perhaps?

Of course there is always Maxtor mocha!

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

"charlie" wrote in message

The only problem is finding an exactly identical HD!
There is a fair chance that the the substitute electronics
on the same model are only partially compatible, which can result in
partial or total data loss. The logical/physical mapping is just one issue.

Hopefully I'm not too late jumping in. I had a problem years ago. I
used a program called filescavenger. Go to
http://download.cnet.com/File-Scavenger-Data-Recovery-Utility/3000-2094
_4-10028488.html Very successful. Definitely get an external enclosure
and plug it into a working computer. If any program can do it this one
can.

$49.95 (free trial lets you recover 64KB file, apparently).

 

[KCB]

Toshiba laptop with Win7 Home Premium. Started by getting file access
errors, then eventually wouldn't boot. I've tried the System Rescue CD
from here:
http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage
and was able to access the directory structure, but no files would show
up.

There is about 220GB used on the 250GB drive. I put the drive in another
computer and ran Chkdsk, which basically said that every file was
unreadable, as it ran for a solid 80 hours.

Question is: What recovery software have you used that might be able to
recover any of the files? These are mostly my daughter's pictures and
music, with some school work thrown in. Nothing she can't live without,
but nonetheless have high value to her. Any help would be appreciated.

Sorry I haven't gotten back, first day I've had a chance to try anything. I
did the freezer trick, but computer wouldn't see the drive. I shut down,
restarted, went into BIOS-the drive wasn't there. I have a 2nd SATA
controller, so tried connecting to that-it dramatically slowed the boot,
trying to identify what was hooked to the port, but still couldn't see the
drive.

I froze it again, thinking maybe I hadn't left it in long enough, this time
for 45 minutes. Computer still didn't see it. Does this mean the drive's
controller is probably bad?

Thanks everybody for the input, I'll hang on to the drive for a bit, but
have given up messing with it for the time being.

 

[Paul]

Sorry I haven't gotten back, first day I've had a chance to try
anything. I
did the freezer trick, but computer wouldn't see the drive. I shut down,
restarted, went into BIOS-the drive wasn't there. I have a 2nd SATA
controller, so tried connecting to that-it dramatically slowed the boot,
trying to identify what was hooked to the port, but still couldn't see the
drive.

I froze it again, thinking maybe I hadn't left it in long enough, this time
for 45 minutes. Computer still didn't see it. Does this mean the drive's
controller is probably bad?

Thanks everybody for the input, I'll hang on to the drive for a bit, but
have given up messing with it for the time being.

1) Stick your ear to the drive, and listen for a spinning platter.
2) Once the platter is spinning, the controller will attempt to release
the head lock (if one is present), then attempt to move the arm and
head assembly, to slide down the landing ramp. If the platter is up to speed,
the head assembly can then fly over the platter.
3) The disk still has not responded at this point. It will not make any
response to a BIOS command.
4) The drive will attempt to read "track -1", which is the configuration
track holding additional firmware, data structures, that sort of thing.
If track -1 cannot be read, the controller will not respond to probes.
If some of the info is corrupted (like, spares information), it won't
allow any (user commanded) operations either.

If it gets past this point, it is ready for business.

If a command results in the controller not being able to locate
a given track, the controller will attempt "re-calibration". It will
move back to track zero, maybe you'll even hear the head assembly
hit the stop. On the older drives, this gave you a nice "clunk" or
"thump" and you knew you were in trouble.

I think the above design is dumb. In that, the controller should
always respond. Like, if step 1 fails, the controller should
report "error 5 - cannot spin motor". As that would be valuable
information for a user or for a repair person to have. The
"silent approach" used, is for the birds. It sucks. Now we
have to stick our ear on the HDA, to get even a little bit of
info. And after the freezer trick, your ear could get
frozen to the disk drive cover

HTH,
Paul

 

[Paul]

One other thing.

As part of any recovery strategy, you should be Googling
the model number of the hard drive. In case there is a
known issue with that drive. You'd be surprised how much
info is out there (like, the DeathStar era).

Paul

 

[pjp]

Sorry I haven't gotten back, first day I've had a chance to try anything. I
did the freezer trick, but computer wouldn't see the drive. I shut down,
restarted, went into BIOS-the drive wasn't there. I have a 2nd SATA
controller, so tried connecting to that-it dramatically slowed the boot,
trying to identify what was hooked to the port, but still couldn't see the
drive.

I froze it again, thinking maybe I hadn't left it in long enough, this time
for 45 minutes. Computer still didn't see it. Does this mean the drive's
controller is probably bad?

Thanks everybody for the input, I'll hang on to the drive for a bit, but
have given up messing with it for the time being.

Guy, been at these things since early 80's and I've never really had any
luck getting much off any hard disk that fails being even seen by the
BIOS let alone the OS. From the sound of it, drive is toast and unless
you have to retrieve the data which would likely entail some data
retrieval company services just throw the damn thing in the garbage.

Note - one thing I do with old hard disk is take them apart and remove
the usually two magnets. They are very powerful. They also exhibit an
interesting characteristic. I have no idea what's going on. Maybe
someone here does?

I'll explain. The two magnets are almost always flat, maybe 1/8" thru.
They have been "glued" to a backing plate that holds them rigid when the
plate is screwed into the case. The two plates face each other with a
space between them that the head runs thru.

If you take the two magnets and place them together you'll need to
"slide" one off the other, you cannot simply pull them apart they are
that strong a bond. Take one of the magnets and place it's "back"
(backing plate side) to the other magnet and again they attract. HOWEVER
if you take and place both backing plates against each other you get
NADA where-as everything I've ever seen before says they should repel
each other.

WTF is going there?

 

[Paul]

Guy, been at these things since early 80's and I've never really had any
luck getting much off any hard disk that fails being even seen by the
BIOS let alone the OS. From the sound of it, drive is toast and unless
you have to retrieve the data which would likely entail some data
retrieval company services just throw the damn thing in the garbage.

Note - one thing I do with old hard disk is take them apart and remove
the usually two magnets. They are very powerful. They also exhibit an
interesting characteristic. I have no idea what's going on. Maybe
someone here does?

I'll explain. The two magnets are almost always flat, maybe 1/8" thru.
They have been "glued" to a backing plate that holds them rigid when the
plate is screwed into the case. The two plates face each other with a
space between them that the head runs thru.

If you take the two magnets and place them together you'll need to
"slide" one off the other, you cannot simply pull them apart they are
that strong a bond. Take one of the magnets and place it's "back"
(backing plate side) to the other magnet and again they attract. HOWEVER
if you take and place both backing plates against each other you get
NADA where-as everything I've ever seen before says they should repel
each other.

WTF is going there?

The backing plates function as flux concentrators ?
And no net flux exists on the back of the plate ?

A piece of paper, and a packet of iron filings, can be used
to visualize the flux lines.

Not all materials will be equally successful as flux
concentrators. Mu metal is particularly good, but expensive.

So I look in this article, and I find...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_metal

"Hard disks, which have mu-metal backings to the magnets found
in the drive to keep the magnetic field away from the disk.
[citation needed]"

Hmmm. So they would waste the money on it Who would
have guessed ? Both the magnet, and the plate, are exotic
materials.

Paul