Urgent:Hard disk crashed

[rhitwick]

Extremely sorry guys, I couldn't reply ur posts.
The day it happened, I had to go for a trip next day. So couldn't do anything.

More about the trip and data recovery coming soon.

Thanx for ur support.

 

[rhitwick]

Try PhotoRec.

Tried. Couldn't understand...it was doing something but nothing came out. I had not had time to wait and watch so closed.

I've had good successes with PC Inspector.

I've been lucky so far. All the major data recovery I've had to do were for others. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

PC Inspector...anything dude, anything. I'm in such a condition that if u give me Gimp and say it recovers data I may also try that.

Hey

Try Recover my files ...... Good at recovering files
PC inspector File Recovery .......Recovers most files ... but cant recover names
My Best bet will be Acronis Partition recovery Software .... I have recovered whole partition from formated hard drives with it ..... Do give it a try ... Its not free ....but U know ....

Acronis...hmmm....why not?!!!

Holy Crap! I'm just planning to buy a 1TB internal WD drive myself. By reading all these horror stories of crashing, it just gives me the heebie-jeebies!

Hope your recover your partition man. I can't imagine myself being in that situation & that too without a proper back up done. My 320GB WD HDD had also crashed about a year back. Although it gave me prior symptoms before dying. So had time to back up all my data on DVD's. I suppose this is a huge lesson learnt for regular back up albeit having a higher capacity drive. The higher the capacity, the bigger the risk of data loss.

It was not a partition. It was a whole drive!!!!! See I'm too skeptical about my data. Thats the reason I had TWO external backup drives for my data. Now my internal drive is well and good its one of those backup drives which went kaput. All my 2.5yrs collection is lost!!!
What do u do when ur backup drive cheats u?! :-X

Use Test Disk - It will help for Sure , Please use TestDisk and it will recover the partition inact

Mine is a External USB drive. Will it work with that?

please reply if any of this things works for you...
i was trying to GHOSTING A XP CD but epically fail and
losted 6 partitions and HDD in raw format

i have losted 300Gb of Music Collection ...
Good News is that i have reBuild my collection upto 83GB

so next time it will help me

i cant stop playing with my system

What did u use?
Sorry for late reply.

@rhitwick, if you feel that that data is extremely important, you better contact folks at Steallar Phoenix Data Recovery or atleast someone from your city if they can recover. It's better to put this in professional hands than to do experiments with it.

Those were very much important. At least 300 to 350 movies I lost and I'm a collector not a casual movie watcher. Those are my life. Nobody dares to touch my drive without my permission. I don't lend it, I don't even move it from its place where it was kept d first day. Though the fcuking ***** betrayed me.

Professional help will be costly. Though if u've any idea how much they can charge, I'll look into it.

the more data you write on that HDD, the less the chance is to get a full recovery.

once the data is recovered, get another 1Tb HDD and use it as backup HDD.

I know and I've not done anything with that drive till now. Only searched with Recover My Files(RMF).
RMF was able to recover one P*** only nothing else.

And others, those 400GB were not for me. I don't collect them It was for my frnd who I promised to give when I meet him going home.

I'm a day-in/day-out person

 

[lywyre]

Try connecting you drive as slave internally, you said it was an external USB drive, might be some problem with the external interface.

Also, don't write again in that drive. I would suggest Get Data Back for NTFS, has always worked for me. Copy the recovered files to a different drive. Hope you have a spare 1TB of space.

 

[rhitwick]

Only "Recuva" recovered a few full length movies. Total 22GB of 900GB.

Took more than 24 hours to search+30 mins to recover.

I've put another search lets see.

Acronis...which one. I installed Disk Doctor but its useless.
Can't understand the functionality of those two DOS apps.

Anyone has any other suggestions.

Saw "Stellar" as a data recovery service providers, thought about approaching buth then saw "Capgemini" as their client. They will charge me millions to recover 1TB!

I guess I've to re-download everything again.

Guys tell me,
1> can there be any issues with my PC?
2> How do I ensure this does not happen again. Internal HDD is understandable but external??? There should be an explanation!
3> Does SSds crash? How much do they cost?

 

[desiibond]

are you using quality USB cable and update USB drivers.

 

[desiibond]

*www.datarecoverymumbai.com/Seagate-Hard-Disk-Recovery.html

 

[NucleusKore]

Anyone has any other suggestions...................

Guys tell me,
1> can there be any issues with my PC?
2> How do I ensure this does not happen again. Internal HDD is understandable but external??? There should be an explanation!
3> Does SSds crash? How much do they cost?

1. You would be using FAT or ntfs filesystem. My 320 GB WD came with a FAT FS ! I formatted it to ntfs using Gparted. You can convert to ntfs without formatting from the windows command line
   
   convert X: /fs:ntfs /v
   
   where you replace X with the drive letter of your hard disk (See in My Computer).
   
2. Use more than one partition. Manufacturers ship with only one partition. Make two or three partitions using Windows disk management system or Gparted.
   
3. Always unmount your drive using the safely remove icon near your system clock.
   Windows Vista
   *img521.imageshack.us/img521/1142/91908image0.th.jpg
   Windows XP
   *img37.imageshack.us/img37/1627/safelyremovehardwareico.th.jpg
   Ubuntu
   *img266.imageshack.us/img266/7879/unmount2.th.jpg
   Kubuntu (KDE 4.x)
   *img31.imageshack.us/img31/3339/kde4790000device.th.jpg
   Kde 3.5.x
   *img34.imageshack.us/img34/7642/snapshot1y.th.png
   
   If the system drive refuses to unmount for ANY reason, make sure no programs are running/writing/reading from/to the drive. If it still refuses to unmount, simply Shutdown your computer. All drives will automatically be unmounted.
4. Last and best solution, use a filesystem like xfs instead of ntfs. You can make xfs using Gparted which you can download separately or run from a Ubuntu live cd. This would mean that you would
   • have to boot from a live Ubuntu cd/usb each time you want to transfer data, or
   • Install Linux in the last 5 GB of your fixed hard disk for the same, or
   • Install Linux in the last 5 GB of your USB hard disk for the same.
   This will ensure that viruses that can normally corrupt your filesystem in a windows environment will not be able to execute.

 

[rhitwick]

You would be using FAT or ntfs filesystem. My 320 GB WD came with a FAT FS ! I formatted it to ntfs using Gparted. You can convert to ntfs without formatting from the windows command line
convert X: /fs:ntfs /v
where you replace X with the drive letter of your hard disk (See in My Computer).

Thanx for the tips but I use NTFS only. FAT is not reliable

Use more than one partition. Manufacturers ship with only one partition. Make two or three partitions using Windows disk management system or Gparted.

Hmmm Good idea, but can USB drives be partitioned?

Always unmount your drive using the safely remove icon near your system clock.
Windows Vista
Windows XP
Ubuntu
Kubuntu (KDE 4.x)
Kde 3.5.x

If the system drive refuses to unmount for ANY reason, make sure no programs are running/writing/reading from/to the drive. If it still refuses to unmount, simply Shutdown your computer. All drives will automatically be unmounted.

Well I use the cache functionality for mass storage which does not require for right click and safe removal.
I guess though windows says it, I should stop doing it.
And, sorry all linux lovers, me not interested to move into linux.

Last and best solution, use a filesystem like xfs instead of ntfs. You can make xfs using Gparted which you can download separately or run from a Ubuntu live cd. This would mean that you would

1.
1. have to boot from a live Ubuntu cd/usb each time you want to transfer data, or
2. Install Linux in the last 5 GB of your fixed hard disk for the same, or
3. Install Linux in the last 5 GB of your USB hard disk for the same.
This will ensure that viruses that can normally corrupt your filesystem in a windows environment will not be able to execute.

Thanx, but its a too much activity to transfer a file.

And, thanx "NucleusKore", I'll look into ur suggestions in future.

 

[desiibond]

also, if you are using torrent clients, make sure that cache size is big.

 

[unni]

Ontrack Easy Recovery is a good software. I have used it a few times (1 year ago, now I don't know how good it is), though only for partition recovery and not for full drive recovery.

I think SpinRite could be the best solution for you. I have heard quite a lot of such horror stories in their SecurityNow podcast where SpinRite came to the rescue. Its not free and I have never used it.

 

[rhitwick]

also, if you are using torrent clients, make sure that cache size is big.

No, no...I don't directly d/l on the disk. I first d/l in my internal disk then cut-paste to the external. The external drive was powered on only for this reason/viewing movies.
Then I used to disconnect again.

 

[desiibond]

ah okay. btw, did you check with those folks at mumbaidatarecovery.in

 

[rhitwick]

ah okay. btw, did you check with those folks at mumbaidatarecovery.in

Not yet.
B/W I've checked the link already. Mine is a WD drive and in WD section I could not find the model no of my drive.
I'll look again and anyway call them...

 

[NucleusKore]

Thanx for the tips but I use NTFS only. FAT is not reliable
Hmmm Good idea, but can USB drives be partitioned?

Well I use the cache functionality for mass storage which does not require for right click and safe removal.
I guess though windows says it, I should stop doing it.
And, sorry all linux lovers, me not interested to move into linux.



Thanx, but its a too much activity to transfer a file.

And, thanx "NucleusKore", I'll look into ur suggestions in future.

I think you cannot access beyond the first partition in Windows, I am not sure. The same restriction isn't there in Linux.

As for the "cache functionality", it's not reliable, always safely remove, and shutdown/reboot if it refuses to unmount.

 

[rhitwick]

Latest update:- (ya, I've still not lost hope to get my data back )

I tried this weekend with "Easy Data Recovery", profile used "RAW recovery".
It scanned the 931GB for 19hours then got stuck while "building tree"...(wasted another 10hrs there)

I put it again t0 scan for two time, it took 17hrs avg to scan, found some crores of files while scanning but at finish returned zero results

Last try is "Recover My files", want to give it its course, lets see....

 

[NucleusKore]

I think you're wasting your time, and killing what's left of your hard disk.

 

[rhitwick]

Guys, latest development!!! Yes development it is.

At the day of my previous day I've formatted the disk and forgot everything about recovering data.

I put another 16GB in it and that mofo again crashed
This time I formatted again and ran checkdisk by Acronis, it showed that my disk has some KBs of Bad Sector.
*www.imgx.org/thumbs/small/43707_arpn4/WD_1TB_chkdsk_Acronis.JPG

I tried to make partition in dat drive keeping the bad sector part in a isolated drive (first selected file system as NTFS and next tried to keep it RAW)
Both the time Acronis showed that it can't create partition where bad sector is found.

Now what do I do? Replacement is what I'm looking at but, its gonna take time.

And, can there be any problem with my sys such as voltage fluctuation in my USB ports etc highly unlikely events?

EDIT:-
I've tried something.
I've deleted the whole WD drive. So it became RAW.
Kept first 14-15GB as RAW (Acronis HIdden)
And created rest 915GB as NTFS partition. This time it allowed to create a partition. Experts, please advice, am I safe now? Am I successful to keep the bad sector isolated?
*www.imgx.org/thumbs/small/43708_djlz2/WD_Aftr_Partitioning.JPG

 

[NucleusKore]

Bad sectors? Claim a warranty replacement. No warranty? You can mark the bad sectors as unusable. I used to use Norton Disk Doctor for that. Don't know of any other software. I think WD has a free hard disk tool on their website for the same. Select your hard disk model number there and see.

 

[pulkit_aga]

these days iam hearing so many news about hard disks crashing from everywhere this was so less about 2 yrs back and its not just any one company but almost alll some less some more.maximum crash of HDD is reported to be from seagate hardisks 7200.11 version about 40%.
suddenly why is there so much drop in the quality of hard disk from all manufacturers.i have been using 1 hard disk from seagate and another from samsung more than 6 yrs now without any single problem but these days HD crash has become a common thing.
now which one should we buy?

 

[harishgayatri]

Rhitwick.

Please try Active partition recovery.

I have 100% success rate with that.

If I am not wrong, it is your MBR which has gone down.

Active recovery Should be able to help you unless you have formatted your HDD.

Please let me know about your progress.

I am also a Happy WD 1TB Essential Edition User