PC Problem - HDD malfunction

[Ronwue]

I'm gonna be brief, cause this problem's burning a hole in my work.
I have an HDD that started acting up and then almost literally broke.

Scenario :

- After a unfriendly reboot (power-outage) the Windows Vista Business (32b) booting procedure gave a message that System.(extension I forgot) was corrupt.
- Restoring to previous configurations (I had 3) did not seem to fix the problem.
- Attempting to install Windows Vista failed 4 times on accounts of "after long periods of time nothing happened (3 hours + of waiting after the Install Now button)"
- Attempting to install Windows 7 succeeded (till after the point of installing updates but before a fresh boot of windows) once till a timeout error.
- I've installed Windows 7(64b) on a HDD I had in one of my old pcs and it booted up just fine with drivers installed and all (without the broken HDD connected to the PC)
- I installed the broken HDD on the system and Windows 7 does not continue (I waited for about 2 hours) after the Starting Windows screen (the loading screen).
- I tried the broken HDD on another pc with Windows XP and it did not go past the loading screen either.
- I tried Windows XP setup on the old pc and waited about 1 hour on the inspecting the broken HDD.

Conclusion :
Obviously the broken HDD is broken, thing is I want the data within. Putting aside horrendous hardware (from the HDD) malfunction, the data should be salvageable. I narrowed down two paths:
1) Obviously, considering that the OP system takes a lot of time to boot with the broken HDD attached, I want to buy an external rack with USB connector, so I can boot the system then hot-swap the hdd into it, hopefully getting access to the data inside.
2) Get a bootable dvd/usb stick etc and have on it something like norton commander or the like, for me to take the data I need, or access disk fixing tools like scandisk and the like.

I'm gonna try option 1 Monday considering it takes a bit of money. Since then I'm looking for suggestions of what to use for path 2, or other options i might have.

I could specify my computer specs, but I doubt they're meaningful considering I've tested the HDD on multiple platforms.
Thanks for reading and I am sorry for my wall of text and I hope I'll get to the bottom of this.
Have fun.
Ronwue.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Unfortunately, if the problem is an actual physically-damaged (or otherwise physically faulty) hard drive, your chances of recovering the data onboard- without resorting to expensive data-recovery services which will cost you several THOUSAND dollars- are close to nil. No matter how you hook this drive up to any computer, if the mechanisms inside are inoperative or cannot operate properly, you are what we in the business call "shit out of luck".

Now. That's the bad news. The good (or, at least less bad) news is that, unless you've heard sounds coming from the hard drive (such as grinding or clicking), then the odds of it being a physical failure are fairly slim. The next most likely problem is read errors or bad sectors somewhere critical; the NFTS file system is supposed to be able to get around this in some cases, but it can't always. However, there are freeware programs available to perform data recovery on drives that cannot be read by Windows itself. I can't remember any offhand, but I'll see if there are any reputable ones I can find- in the meantime you'll want to do a Google search and see what ones might fit your needs. (Of course, always be careful not to get caught by hidden malware programs.)

Good luck with this.

 

[Ronwue]

Massive snip

Does the broken HDD use a SATA connection? If it does, it's already hot-swappable. (Or it is provided you enable AHCI in your BIOS). Just open your case while your computer is booted up, plug it in and you'll get "New storage device connected" (or some-such). I do it on occasion with an old notebook HDD; My notebook only has room for one, so I have a spare one I hot-plug into my desktop to back up stuff, mainly Steam games as they have recently ballooned to over 150GB.

Yes, the broken HDD does use a SATA connection. I suppose I have to give power to the HDD before booting up

Unfortunately, if the problem is an actual physically-damaged (or otherwise physically faulty) hard drive, your chances of recovering the data onboard- without resorting to expensive data-recovery services which will cost you several THOUSAND dollars- are close to nil. No matter how you hook this drive up to any computer, if the mechanisms inside are inoperative or cannot operate properly, you are what we in the business call "shit out of luck".

Now. That's the bad news. The good (or, at least less bad) news is that, unless you've heard sounds coming from the hard drive (such as grinding or clicking), then the odds of it being a physical failure are fairly slim. The next most likely problem is read errors or bad sectors somewhere critical; the NFTS file system is supposed to be able to get around this in some cases, but it can't always. However, there are freeware programs available to perform data recovery on drives that cannot be read by Windows itself. I can't remember any offhand, but I'll see if there are any reputable ones I can find- in the meantime you'll want to do a Google search and see what ones might fit your needs. (Of course, always be careful not to get caught by hidden malware programs.)

Good luck with this.

No sounds coming from the inside of the HDD, I'd have went straight to the service people, dangled it in front of them and go "Is my HDD supposed to sound like this?"

Thanks for the offer for help. I'll eagerly await your replies

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

So I did a little bit of searching on a forum I trust very strongly about this sort of thing, and I came up with the following four possible solutions:

www.runtime.org/ - Get Data Back
www.stellarinfo.com/ - Stellar Phoenix
www.grc.com/spinrite.htm - GRC Spinrite
www.ontrack.com/software/ - Ontrack

Sadly, none of these are freeware, so it's up to you to decide if the data on that drive is worth $70-80. If the cost is too high, I'll see what I can find in the freeware world that might do the same (or a similar) job.

 

[Laughing Man]

The drives dead, hot swapping is a waste of time as it will suffer from the same issue that installing a DVD that can't be read. I.e Windows will sit there endlessly looking for the drive's contents and will pretty much refuse to do anything even remotely associated with the drive.

When you connect the drive and power up at first you should hear a whirr as the drive spin up and a click as the read / write head powers up. If you aren't hearing anything at all then the drive is dead, toast doesn't matter if you install it before booting the PC or after loading Windows if the drive platter can't be spun up or the read / write head isn;t work then the drive is done for.

One tip I have heard is that dead drives can be given a second lease of life, if the drive spins up but doesn't work it is often due to a stuck read write head. The process of chilling and then rewarming the drive can cause a damaged or stuck read / write head to become unstuck. It will only work for a little while so if it does, get the data off and get rid of the dud drive.

 

[Ronwue]

Yes, the broken HDD does use a SATA connection. I suppose I have to give power to the HDD before booting up

Hehe, yes, that was implied, but not necessarily before booting up. You can plug the power whenever you plug the SATA connector one, in whatever order, and it should be recognized shortly.

Yes, it does work, now I'll try different data recovery tools. Thanks for sparing me a little amount of money

So I did a little bit of searching on a forum I trust very strongly about this sort of thing, and I came up with the following four possible solutions:

www.runtime.org/ - Get Data Back
www.stellarinfo.com/ - Stellar Phoenix
www.grc.com/spinrite.htm - GRC Spinrite
www.ontrack.com/software/ - Ontrack

Sadly, none of these are freeware, so it's up to you to decide if the data on that drive is worth $70-80. If the cost is too high, I'll see what I can find in the freeware world that might do the same (or a similar) job.

Yes, some freeware would be cool. 70~80$ is a bit out of my budget at the moment.

The drives dead, hot swapping is a waste of time as it will suffer from the same issue that installing a DVD that can't be read. I.e Windows will sit there endlessly looking for the drive's contents and will pretty much refuse to do anything even remotely associated with the drive.

When you connect the drive and power up at first you should hear a whirr as the drive spin up and a click as the read / write head powers up. If you aren't hearing anything at all then the drive is dead, toast doesn't matter if you install it before booting the PC or after loading Windows if the drive platter can't be spun up or the read / write head isn;t work then the drive is done for.

One tip I have heard is that dead drives can be given a second lease of life, if the drive spins up but doesn't work it is often due to a stuck read write head. The process of chilling and then rewarming the drive can cause a damaged or stuck read / write head to become unstuck. It will only work for a little while so if it does, get the data off and get rid of the dud drive.

I had read that as well I'll give it a shot after everything else fails. It's a learning experience this. The drive spins and the clicking is there.

- LE - after a really fast hot swap I got some answers from it. It's not dead. The info can be read so with some amount of luck I should be able to painstakingly recover some of the more important data.

-- LLE -- Was being hopeful on my part. I think I don't have a choice but to take it to a data recovery service.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Yeah, I apologize for the delay in my reply. I've been looking in all my regular places looking for information on freeware data recovery programs with no luck. However, I forgot about Major Geeks. Give this page a look [http://majorgeeks.com/downloads38.html] if you're still looking to try to get the data yourself. Some of the programs on there are freeware, but I can't make any sort of testiment as to how effective they are.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

you can find a few programs to recover lost files on a hard drive, you might have to pay for them tho

 

[gxs]

I think that hiren's boot cd has some useful boot options (mini windows) and data recovery software.
I don't know if it's free though.