*sigh*
Pretty much every single wallpaper, animation, hoodie, and T-shirt I ever designed has been lost. Not to mention all of my music but luckily i have so many external hard drives around that i saved about 98% of it to one of them. Being the idiot that i am and having sentimental faith in old hard drive I named Jade, I didnt think about backing up my work or my imaging folders onto another disc or internally.
My computer crashed... my other hard drive works and the computer is in working order but somehow along the way, the hard drive in question got messed up. When i tried to restart my computer once, I heard a loud ticking sound coming from it that i've never heard before. I knew that it got damaged badly because I could feel it tick hard when i put my hand on the case.
I freaked out. The heart and soul of Jade is my work that i've done over the years spanning a few different OS generations and computers. So I called up my co-worker who is currently close to finishing his classes in some computer field. I think it's network security but it touches on hardware failure and data recovery. Basically, he told me to copy anything i could off of that drive because the headers were what i heard ticking and my drive is about to die.
Anywho, I reconnected my drive to my laptop to see if the drive still works and it did (Jade's name and Icon showed up in My Computer) but it took awhile to try to open up folders. I was upset because the most important folder, my imaging folder, was not on that list of folders and about a quarter of the total files were there. When i disconnected it from my laptop and loaded it back onto my desktop... OMG! All the folders showed up and in my main folder (music and what not) all the files showed up. The only problem was this. My imaging folder and all the subfolders and files were the most affected. It was the only folder that took a very long time to load. All the subfolders were there but almost none of the actual content. I panicked again but as i waited it out, the thumbnails of what were in each folder slowly came forth. There were only a few folders (the most recent folders i made) that didnt show anything. I was so relieved.
At any rate, my co-worker told me to wait for the drive to cool down before i attempt to copy anything out, stating that heat will just make it worse. True but he also told me to follow my instincts. I felt that this is the closest i'll ever get to seeing anything and i need to get things out now. I asked him about it and he assured me that it will be ok to do it later, about an hour after the drive cools. I was apprehensive but i reluctantly followed his instructions and shut down my computer then disconnected my drive and cut off the power to the drive.
I went to the gym and ate dinner with my sisters. I was gone for more than an hour. When i returned, I turned my computer on and waited for it to completely load. After, I plugged in my drive and Jade's soul was missing. again, only about a quarter of the files showed up but the imaging folder was again absent from the viewable folders. I disconnected the drive and shut the computer down. When i got the nerve to turn it back on, it got worse. Although the J drive showed up in my computer, Jade's name nor her picture showed up. I could not even access the drive. I disconnected from the desktop and connected it to my laptop. same deal.
So what i did was download the diagnostic tool from manufacturer's support page and ran it on my laptop. The program does recognize the drive and even states its model number but nothing else. I ran the quick test and extended tests and the quick tests passes but the extended fails early on. Doesn't tell me much about what's wrong except "too many bad sectors" and it gives me the option of trying to repair. If i try to repair it gives me this warning that any data on repaired sectors may be erased. *sigh* I have chosen not to try to repair it yet because i need to see all the options opened to me.
Today, I connected it to my desktop and much of the same except on the same diagnostic program, the drive doesnt even show up. strange. I also ran partition magic to see if it could see the drive and it did, oddly enough. It even states the size of the drive and how much is used up on it with how much free space. Also, it also recognizes its name as Jade and the file system it's using. The only problem is, that's all it can do.
There is a little hope because that program was able to get out some type of detail from the drive that windows and the diagnostic tool can't. when i went to check for errors using PartitionMagic, it told me that it was error #45 "CRC error in data." I don't know if that is correct but i went looking into that and found a few programs that read that type of corrupted data or what not. I even looked into data recovery programs but I don't know which one to use.
Anywho, thank you for listen to me rant and any comments, help, or advice are welcomed.
*notes -everytime i said "disconnected the drive" i used the safely remove hardware thingy and just did not rip it out of the computer. -Im running a Dell Dimension 9100 series with a pentium D proccessor using XP Media Center. I think its running on 1 gig of ram and at least 3.0 ghz. -My laptop is an HP Pavillion dv6000. I bought it off of that same co-worker i mentioned above. I know its a dual core AMD but i forgot its full specs. -The drive in question is a Western Digital Series II 120 gig external hard drive. yeah its really old.
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4 years, 11 months ago
Whoa, im truly sorry for your lost.
http://static.animepaper.net/images/emo/nanana.gifp(T_T)q emoticon
I have a very similar problem like a year ago, but i did not have any kind of backup That was a really bad day.
Try some of these programs maybe they help you out:
EasyRecovery: for me its the best recovery program, it will recover all the possible data in a rough state.
HDD Regenerator: I havent really seen this program but i heard that it can repair almost any hard disk or recover any kind of information in it. If you manage to get it, i will also like a copy : )
Thats all i can do, please dont give up. GOOD LUCK.
4 years, 11 months ago
:[
I had the exact same experience, even down to the clicking noise. It's dead. And if you do manage to get the folders to appear, they'll never transfer, it'll only seem like it's doing it and then 10 hours later, it'll be like FAILED.
On the slightly bright side, from experience I can say it makes you less attached to your work...
4 years, 11 months ago
Its not my intention to be mean but it did make me chuckle a little when i read this. My condolences to you and your drive. I guess all i can do is laugh about it and not dwell on it so much.
I did get back on the horse, so to speak. I'm trying to finish up a simple animation for my myspace (yeah i know... myspace *eyes roll*). Its keeping my attention so far. But then i go looking for things that i collected that i could use and i remember jade died.
*sigh* i'm going to research this recovery thing later and see if its even possible. I'll tell you what i find and if it works.
I really was proud of my haruhi t-shirt... i was going to make a wallpaper from it even though it was a very basic design.
4 years, 11 months ago
Before you try to recover data from your drive, best to work out if the problem is of a software or hardware nature. Data recovery programs can help only if it is not a major hardware problem.
For example, if you accidentally deleted the partition, or (quick) formatted the drive, or the file allocation tables were corrupted, data recovery software can still do a deep scan of the disk and try and reassemble whatever raw data can still be read off.
For such cases (from my own experience recovering a 250GB corrupt partition) I'd recommend zero assumption recovery, but the demo version only recovers 4 folders per run, so you need to be very patient and run it repeatedly, or pay up for the full version.)
However, since you indicated that there was a loud ticking sound from the drive, this means there is/was definitely a hardware issue with mechanical parts of HDD.
For more information on identifying physical/mechanical damage to the drive:http://z-a-recovery.com/physical-hard-drive-failure.htm
** If the drive is still clicking/ticking each time you start it up, please stop using it - this means the drive arm or drive head may be scratching against the disk surface or some other similar problem and will cause even more physical damage and cause you to lose even more data.** If you really want your data back that badly, you'll need to contact a HDD recovery service: ontrack / drivesavers /fields associates (UK) / acs data. They usually only charge you for successful recovery.
If, however, the drive is not making any more clicking sounds now, we can't be too sure. If the physical damage was *limited*, then there is a chance of rescuing the data that is not on the physically damaged portions using diy recovery software. However, you say that it originally "worked" after a fashion, but later on you cannot even access it at all... this seems to suggest that continuing to use the drive is resulting in more damage. (even if you don't hear clicking, something might be going on inside.)
Since the drive diagnostics indicates "too many bad sectors", this suggests that there is significant physical damage. It's your call really, whether you want to try your luck with a diy recovery software or entrust this to professionals (and pay them >_< ). If you choose to try zero assumption recovery, it will display a pretty neat graphic while it is scanning that shows you where the bad sectors are... if there are lots and lots of those, then I'd rate the chances of recovery pretty low. =(
4 years, 11 months ago
I agree with everything that hamster has said. However, since you describe that you heard a clicking noise from your HD, I would not continue trying to "force" the HD to read (it won't most of the time) as you are more likely to cause more damage to the platters.
The best option for recovery without the risk of further damaging your drive is to take it to a data recovery tech. There is not guarantee that they will be able to recover all (or any) of your data. However, as hamster has stated, these services cost quite a bit.
One thing to keep in mind for the future. HD's take a lot of stress when they are constantly turned on and off. External HD's are not normally running constantly, so if you perpetually turn it on/off to back up small amounts of files, you are slowly wearing down the life of the drive.
I remember there was an article in Maximum PC about this... I'll see if I can dig that up for reference. At either rate, I am terribly sorry about your loss.
I hope you can salvage a majority of your data.
4 years, 11 months ago
So even if the drives a full 4 years old, to exceed that number you would have to perform around 35 cycles per day to exceed the design spec.
Not to say that power cycles aren't stressing the drive, or that failures aren't related to it. Just that in fairly modern drives this shouldn't really be a problem.
4 years, 11 months ago
the drive is pretty old since it has no power switch of any kind and does not turn off when the computer shuts down like my other one. I did leave it on all the time though but the heat generated from staying on all the time might have added to the damage. blah i think i made it worse when i forgot to disconnect the drive when restarting and when the computer was booting, it lagged a little on the loading the login screen. thats when the drive became inaccessible. prior to that the drive was still able to show some folders.
4 years, 11 months ago
Hmm, yes all harddrives are sensitive for sudden failure. I once lost all my install files, lots of anime series and movies because I accidentally tripped over the power cord of my external HDD. Couldn't access the drive before formatting. I now use 1 internal HDD for regular backup of my most important files and luckily I got some friends with an anime collection similar to mine, so I can always share with them again.
In short though, it sucks.
4 years, 11 months ago
This may or may not help you, but it might give you some hope.
My parents' hard drive crashed about a month ago. My dad explained that whenever he turned the computer on, he would hear a loud clicking noise, and that the computer refused to boot up. I told him not to mess with it, because it sounded like the hard drive had physically crashed.
I went home a few days ago and messed with it. I plugged it into another (my) computer with Windows Vista, and although the hard drive showed up in the BIOS, it refused to show up in Vista. I then tried booting into Linux, and I was able to see the hard drive. An hour later I was able to transfer everything from that hard drive onto another external hard drive, saving my parents' e-mail messages, contacts, and most importantly, several years of financial data.
In retrospect, I should've gone to a professional service instead of attempting to read from the hard drive myself. If the hard drive had truly, completely crashed, I could've done a lot more harm than good. However, if you're unwilling to pay for a professional service, using another OS (OS X or *Nix) might be worth a shot. I'm under the impression that different OSes read data differently from hard drives, and if that's the case, that difference might have made all the difference for my parents' data.
4 years, 11 months ago
That's not entirely correct, depending on what you mean by "read data differently".
The hard drive is physically the same and functions the same, but the data is stored differently depending on the filesystem(s) with which the drive was formatted - generally FAT/FAT32/NTFS for windows, ext2/ext3 for *nix, etc.
But trying the drive on another OS changes neither the physical function of the drive nor the formatted filesystem. Depending on the OS and the filesystem, the drive may or may not be accessible - a (windows) FAT32 drive can be read by Linux, but Windows can't read a Linux ext3 partition. This fact holds for all drives/partitions, regardless of whether they are functional or damaged.
I can't tell exactly what happened in your case without more details, Pomorales, but it sounds like you have separate partitions for windows and linux (and maybe another for data) and the crash caused only the windows boot/system files to corrupt (or only a little more than that). This is quite different from the situation Philter is in.
As a side note, good data recovery software can function without knowing the filesystem beforehand - they can deep scan the drive, reading raw bits and bytes, and then guess the filesystem in order to reassemble things back.
Philter - I forgot to mention that you could check with hard drive manufacturers as well. I don't know about western digital, but I know that Seagate does have data recovery services. I suppose the people who make hard drives would know best about all the tricks for recovering data from them.
4 years, 11 months ago
Western Digital doesn't offer any type of data recovery service. If the drive is still under warrenty, the best they will do is RMA it and send a "working" drive to you. :(
4 years, 11 months ago
Philter - I forgot to mention that you could check with hard drive manufacturers as well. I don't know about western digital, but I know that Seagate does have data recovery services. I suppose the people who make hard drives would know best about all the tricks for recovering data from them.
on the western digital/manufacturer note, its like what Candia said and my drive is way past warrenty.
now for the data recovery software thing, i just have so many questions or just dont know where to start. it passed the quick test on the diagnostic tool from WD, so does that mean theres a little bit of a spark left and i could try to use software to recover some stuff? my co-worker wants to take a look at it and use some of his software to try to recover some data but he doesnt know if it will work because its for systems recovery or something like that. Should i let him take a stab at it? oh yeah and he's a Mac guy (no offense to any mac users on here and power to you guys if you do, but he just goes on about how much better it is than PCs sometimes... blah) and hes going to try to see if his mac could help. The statement about the file systems above makes me think his mac won't do much if anything. He does have a PC though cuz his course of study and career path require working on PCs (which i dont get why hes still a mac fan if hes in front of PCs all the time... sorry... another issue... another time)i dont even know if i'm making any sense. I just got off my shift at work. Thank you all for your input btw... its very helpful for me.
4 years, 11 months ago
Warranty service from any manufacturer is basically as you have described, for free. Data recovery is an extra service you have to pay for, so not everyone would offer it. WD can get you discounts with ontrack, I think.
What I meant is that seagate also offers the same data recovery services like drivesavers, ontrack, etc that I'd listed earlier. You'll also be able to conveniently purchase a new drive from them and they'll transfer all your data across to it.
We can't be entirely sure. I presume you are using WD's data lifeguard utility (DLGDIAG) for windows (manual for that is here (pdf)). That quick test basically verifies the S.M.A.R.T. params on the drive and does not check the disk surface like the extended test does. We know from the extended test's "too many bad sectors" that there is significant damage to the disc platter surface. The concerns now are:
Since the quick test passed, there is a better chance that the drive crash was momentary, and there is no continuing physical damage such as the drive head colliding with the platters. So if you want to take a chance that no further damage will occur, try scanning with zero assumtion recovery to find out the extent of the damage and see how much of your files it can find. (If things look good, save the scan results. Then you can purchase the software and load the previous result without having to scan all over again, which can take hours. >_< )
Make sure his software does not write to the drive, since that may overwrite your data. If he's talking about systems recovery as in fix corrupted system files, then that's not the right way to do it. You need data recovery software, the stuff that tries to read from it, not stuff that tries to fix the files on it.
TBH, it's pretty hard to figure out the extent of the problem just by posting here because of the limited information, so if you don't want to take your chances with DIY, you ought to get someone technically skilled that you trust help you out, that would be ideal. Otherwise, best go to the pros.
4 years, 10 months ago
I think you should go to the recovery lab since the chance you get the files back is biggest. They are professionals. Otherwise, you might wanna try different recovery softwares since the partition might corrupt because of the bas sectors.
Anyway, I wish you luck and if you get your files back, you might wanna buy an external harddrive that has physical drives and configure it to use RAID 1. Maxtor has it.
4 years, 10 months ago
Anyway, I wish you luck and if you get your files back, you might wanna buy an external harddrive that has physical drives and configure it to use RAID 1. Maxtor has it.
Professional data recovery costs a LOT. I had to send a 4-drive array and RAID card to a company out of Minneapolis for an area school, and the total recovery price was $13,000 USD. I don't remember the byte count, but I do remember that it wasn't much.
Either way, if you've got a lot of important data, you should be making backups rather than just relying on one storage location...
4 years, 10 months ago
Anyway, I wish you luck and if you get your files back, you might wanna buy an external harddrive that has physical drives and configure it to use RAID 1. Maxtor has it.
Professional data recovery costs a LOT. I had to send a 4-drive array and RAID card to a company out of Minneapolis for an area school, and the total recovery price was $13,000 USD. I don't remember the byte count, but I do remember that it wasn't much.
Either way, if you've got a lot of important data, you should be making backups rather than just relying on one storage location...
Whoa. I didn't think it would cost that much, sorry. >_< Is it really costly or it is just because they are making profit out of the company having no other choice. Well, it's their know-how...
Anyway I think using RAID 1 helps. Or just use 2 hard drives and use SyncToy ^^
4 years, 10 months ago
Same thing happened with my 120gb WD external. Lost all my marketing proposals and some personal documents as well. The disk would spin up, make a horrible noise (think the platters were touching), then spin back down. For a period of 10min I had it working and I tried to transfer as much as possible but in the end it was a lost cause. I backup the most sensitive data now on dvd's.
4 years, 10 months ago
Personally I think DVDs are not that safe. Some of them tend to degrade quite quickly. I would still prefer a RAID 1. If you are using DVDs, make sure you use high quality ones, like verbatim data life plus and maybe some silica gel or the box with humidity control?
4 years, 10 months ago
With raid 1 what happens if you get a virus, you delete a file, your raid controller fails, multiple hard drive failures (physical shock, surge, PSU failure or lightning strike takes out both drives) or maybe some other form of data corruption occurs. The answer is that you loose your data.
Though with DVD's make sure you buy quality media as you said and a decent drive, also don't burn too quickly. If your really worried get a (second) DVD drive that can scan well and scan your disks for problems.
4 years, 10 months ago
O.O...you're all scaring me now... *decides to made copies on cds*