Dead Hard Drive?

Gehad_JoyRider

Hi Every one,

A year ago I had a hard drive die on me, which wasn't catastrophic in some respects. But still is in others I've got a lot of content on the drive id like to get back.

Mostly photography I'd been working on and i really want it back.

Now All i hear from the hard drive is a light clicking noise, I'm just wondering is there a place i can send it to, to get the content/data back?

thanks

ressem

Gehad_JoyRider wrote: »

Hi Every one,

A year ago I had a hard drive die on me, which wasn't catastrophic in some respects. But still is in others I've got a lot of content on the drive id like to get back.

Mostly photography I'd been working on and i really want it back.

Now All i hear from the hard drive is a light clicking noise, I'm just wondering is there a place i can send it to, to get the content/data back?

thanks

Step 1 should be stop letting windows continue to try and fail to access the data.

Yes there are firms. Googling Data Recovery will identify a few decent ones.

Kroll OnTrack and CriticalData have been mentioned in earlier threads as working for boardsies.
http://www.criticaldata.ie/data-recovery-faq/
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.ie/hard-drive-recovery/

If the contents aren't worth €300+ to you, and you will gamble with losing more data; then Kroll offer DIY software if you are adventurous. If you go to a nearby IT repair shop, they might take this route.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.ie/file-recovery-software/#oer11-comparison-table
https://www.piriform.com/recuva is a simpler option.
And a more techie option
http://www.r-studio.com/
The NTFS version for your situation.

(And gddrescue on linux if you like mucking with disk sectors using a command line. )

The approach that should be taken is to create an image containing as much as possible to a different disk, then carry out analysis on the image to extract file information.
A fair enough chance that the bulk of files are recoverable within a day, if you aren't unlucky.

drunkmonkey

Get a hard drive caddy and stick the drive in it..you might still be able to get into the folders you need, photo's etc. If you have a portable or back up drive you could just stick it in that it work as a cadddy.

Digital Solitude

Hardly just the needle offset?

You could use Clonezilla to dump an image of the hard drive, and explore the image with no worries about the drive dying or anything after the image is created.

If this does work, try giving the drive a nice solid smack off a wall or desk, hit the flat side and plug it in to see if it still clicks.

wylie

This happened to me a while back, ended up connecting it as a slave drive to my desktop. You will need a cable that costs about a fiver i think, you never said what type of hdd it is. Internal desktop/laptop-External, but it works just like a external drive. This will only work if you hdd is not ruined.


If you want to try this route you can find videos on youtube that are easy to follow. or msg back and i will post it.

Good luck.

ED E

If its got the click of death its unlikely a home recovery will work, other than ghetto cooling it while reading the stuff off it.

As above, go to a lab that can do a real recovery if the data is worth it.

ressem

ED E wrote: »

If its got the click of death its unlikely a home recovery will work, other than ghetto cooling it while reading the stuff off it.

'Click of death' was a thing with old zip drives. With hard drives, clicking can be caused by as little as handful of unreadable sectors in just the wrong place.

Lu Tze

ressem wrote: »

'Click of death' was a thing with old zip drives. With hard drives, clicking can be caused by as little as handful of unreadable sectors in just the wrong place.

is it not a borked read/write head in the hard drive? I always assumed this wasn't feasibly recoverable at home

T-Bird

Clicking tells me it's a hardware issue. The heads are looking for a reference point and can't find it.

Apart from sending it away, a possible cheap solution could be to get a replacement pcb board and try that. Main problem there is that there can be many versions of the board produced, and also many different firmware versions of the same boards as well. Especially if it's a Seagate drive.

beauf

ressem wrote: »

'Click of death' was a thing with old zip drives. With hard drives, clicking can be caused by as little as handful of unreadable sectors in just the wrong place.

It may have started with Zip drives. But there certain hard drives that were know to fail with a click of death.

I've never know a hard drive with a click to last very long. I would never trust a drive once it starts to click.

When you have exhausted all other options (mentioned above) and you've nothing else to lose. The freezer trick has worked for me a couple of times. Drive worked for about 20 mins at a time. enough to get the data off it. But then died permanently.

circadian

If it's a laptop try sitting it on it's side, I had the click years ago and this gave me time to grab coursework off it. That said using the drive could damage it more.

Like others have said, fork out for lab recovery if you're willing to pay.