Hard Disk reading software

Tea 1000

Hi,
Anyone know of some good software that's free and can read the file structire of a Hard Disk that seems to have had it's Volume information deleted or corrupted?
I don't want to initialise and format it until I know what I'm loosing!
Thanks.

Sparkicks

Use a file recovery such as file scavenger or "file recovery" google the terms.

CHW

I would advocate File Scavenger too, but it's not free. Believe me, I've tried lots of different software, free and trials, some worked in some situations, others in other situations, but File Scavenger is simply the best I've tried in terms of reliability and chance at recovering, speed of scanning and price.

I'm not an IT tech person, but I managed to recover all important documents off a PC at work using it, from a hard drive that was doing the dreaded clicking of death and IT support had designated as beyond hope.

My advice, if you can afford the €50, think you would be needing to use this type of software in difficult situations fairly regularly, don't waste your time trying anything else. There are plenty of free software applications that will recover recently, accidently deleted or recycled files, but when you're looking at corruption, dying disks, disks that even linux OSs are having serious issues with, then try this.

Biro

Does it show up as a drive letter?

CHW

Will depend on how badly damaged (physically) or corrupted the hard drive is. The worst case I've seen with a dying disk, Windows detected a disk connected, and assigned a letter (under IDE connection), but couldn't determine anything else about the disk (model/size/format/etc) and would freeze up and hang. File Scavenger was able to see the disk, and eventually read off everything I needed to get off it. I was able to get so much off it in fact, that it looked like I could nearly rebuild the OS on another drive if I wanted. I experimented further with the disk, and was able to get the same data off it 2 more times; the disk was dead after that.

It's probably important that any jumpers are correctly set if connected in a normal way. You may get more reliable recovery if you use a USB>IDE/SATA cable to connect the disk to the PC. It's also easier to use in that you don't have to be opening the PC to connect up the disk.

The software site will give you more information on how it works, and you can always download a trial and see if its detecting whatever disks you want to have a look at.

Tea 1000

It sounds perfect, none of the normal clicking etc associated with a drive on it's last legs. I currently have it in a USB caddy, and trying to access it that way. It's a SATA drive. Spins up when I power on the caddy, but only sometimes will it show up in Disk Management, and when it does it comes up as Unknown Disk (not initialized). When I try to initialise it I just get an error saying the Disk is not ready. I downloaded PC Inspector File Recovery, but it can't find any volume information either.
I'm afraid that if I pay €50 for Disk Scavanger that it won't find anything and I'll be out of pocket!! If there was a trial version that even showed the results and I had to pay in order to actually restore the files I'd be happy to pay!

CHW

There is a trial version of File Scavenger http://www.quetek.com/download.htm but it's so long since I tried the demo, that I don't remember how it was restricted. Might be worth downloading to try it out.

EDIT: If you don't think the hard drive is dying, it might be worth looking for something free initially that can sort it (with a disk showing signs of dying, you really have to use the best solution you can afford based on how important the information is to you, because you can't know how many more times the disk is going to spin up).

Capt'n Midnight

bedlam wrote: »

TestDisk is free and will try fix partition problems.

If that doesn't work you can use photorec on the same site to pull back files

testdisk is the biz, it will list files/folers that it finds before it writes to the disk
many third party data recovery apps can paint you into a corner


note, if you moved a drive from one computer to another then there is a small chance the drive was described with a different geometry in the other one.

Tea 1000

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Just to update.
I have investigated further and it seems the controller board on the disk has packed it in. That's my best guess so far anyway. The disk mechanism gets power alright, but after trying to get some OS to see the disk, including Vista, XP and some Linux OS, none of them even recognise it as being there. The unknown disk seems to be the USB caddy, as that comes up even with no disk in the caddy.
So, after checking on the manufacturer's site, it seems the disk is still under warranty. So I opted for a new one with advance shipment, meaning that I get the new one first before sending back the old one. I may do some further investigation when the new one arrives, including temporarily changing the controller board to see if that helps me get stuff off the old disk before sending it back. I'll update if that works.
Thanks again!

CHW

Tea 1000 wrote: »

I may do some further investigation when the new one arrives, including temporarily changing the controller board to see if that helps me get stuff off the old disk before sending it back. I'll update if that works.
Thanks again!

Please do, I always find these investigations interesting, seeing what might work or doesn't work in different situations. Good luck with it!

Did you try the trial of file scavenger to see if it could see the disk? Also, it sounds like you took the disk out of the caddy - it would be well worth connecting it directly to a PC (inside) to see if it gets detected (you mightn't even need recovery software if it does). The fact that you're getting the same results with the disk in or out of the caddy suggests that it could be the electronics inside the caddy that's faulty.

Tea 1000

CHW wrote: »

Please do, I always find these investigations interesting, seeing what might work or doesn't work in different situations. Good luck with it!

Did you try the trial of file scavenger to see if it could see the disk? Also, it sounds like you took the disk out of the caddy - it would be well worth connecting it directly to a PC (inside) to see if it gets detected (you mightn't even need recovery software if it does). The fact that you're getting the same results with the disk in or out of the caddy suggests that it could be the electronics inside the caddy that's faulty.

Didn't actually try file scavenger yet, but will do. The caddy is definately fine, in use most days with various disks. The Disk in question is a Sata that is in use on my home PC. The PC could no longer see it, that error just after the bios screen came up to say that there is no disk connected on the SATA channel 1. Same error in a different PC here at work. So not seen at all if it's attached internally.

vir7ual

just a note, unless the drive they're sending is the exact same make/model number then the board swapping might not work. I'm not 100% about this but i think the board may need to be from the same batch of hard drives. someone might be able to clarify this.

Tea 1000

vir7ual wrote: »

just a note, unless the drive they're sending is the exact same make/model number then the board swapping might not work. I'm not 100% about this but i think the board may need to be from the same batch of hard drives. someone might be able to clarify this.

You'd be right on that alright, but I think the drive I have seems to be still in production so I'm hopefull to get an exact replacement.

Tea 1000

Update. Got the replacement hard disk from WD, same model, so all good. Replaced the board onto the old drive, makes a slightly different sound after spinning up, but still nothing. Can't be seen by either external caddy nor onboard SATA. So looks like I'm frigged.

vir7ual

again i'm not 100% on this but do the heads not have to re-alligned after a head crash if you replace the board. I don't know if this can actually be done, but do you not have to tell the heads where their "home" position is

Tea 1000

vir7ual wrote: »

again i'm not 100% on this but do the heads not have to re-alligned after a head crash if you replace the board. I don't know if this can actually be done, but do you not have to tell the heads where their "home" position is

Probably. Still, I can't do any opening of the drive or anything like that or I'll void the warranty, and I need to send it back, so I'll just bite the bullet. Pity, it's not often I'm left with no hope with a hard disk.