corrupt hard drive.. please help

[farmski]

I have a usb maxtor hdd... working fine till the other day..

the device just didnt recognize!!

when it did... the root folder had all the stuff in.. but all the folders were empty... but the hdd did show the hdd was still full etc!!


52 gig free of 300gig etc..

i have a p5q mother board with only one ide cable slot.. so i plugged it in direct as a slave...

still the same problem...

it would only detect in windows after a few attempts when you..... "scan for hardware changes" in device manager!!

even then it showed up for a second then went again!!

tried uninstalling the driver when it did come up... it auto detects it... then same issue... open folder... root ok... nothing in it tho..

every time i boot up... it tries to do a disk check... detects it there... only shows its serial number... and goes no further... so the disk check doesnt work..

when the drive is running... it doesnt click clunk or sound wrong.. there is no apparent intermittent failure of the drive where it starts and stops etc!!

it detects in bios too...

ive tried a dsl solution..
How To Recover Corrupted Hard Drive or NTFS Files | Windows | Tech-Recipes


" keep getting the message can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry dropping you to a very limited shell.
only 4 commands are available.. and sudo isnt one of them !..
but mount is working, but it doesnt find the device, but its readable at boot, i tried fdisk -l , but its not working.. what should i do to complete the KNOPPIX filesystem ?"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
this bloke summed up exactly what i got!!

so this just seems to be a crock of ****... sudo su... doesnt seem to do anything... the commands dont seem to do anything... im at a complete loss to what it actually does.. or apparently doesnt do..


can someone advise of something where i could recover the stuff on it.... please help... its all my backups.. music... programs etc...and ive just bought a new comp and need it all..

ive only learned one thing from this... i need to back up my back ups back up too!! dang!!

cheers

 

[snow]

Hi farmski, welcome to Free PC Help.

This definitely sounds like a bad situation, but there may be some hope yet.

First we'll need to know the file system that the affected hard drive uses. Is it NTFS, or FAT32?

Did this just seem to happen, or was it after you installed any updates, a new program, etc?

One important thing: Don't write any new data to the drive, such as copying files to it. This may affect your chances of file recovery if you have to try it.

 

[farmski]

file system if Fat32

well it was working... left for about a week or so till i came to use it again...and it just wouldnt..

i was setting up my new comp.. so putting new programs.. updates.. anti virus etc etc.. usual stuff really!!

no new data written.. no coffee spills. no dropping.. nothing out the ordinary..!!


thanks..

 

[Wolfeymole]

Why on earth did you install Linux to sort a problem out on an external drive that doesn't possess a bootable partition?

Madness.

Shut down and disconnect the Maxtor USB drive immediately and reboot.

Tell us what happens then.

Do you have your XP disk to hand?

 

[farmski]

the linux thing was a boot cd...nothing installed.. i just searched the problem and found..

"If you have a disaster, an unreadable HDD or Corrupted Partition on windows but the drive can still detected on CMOS/BIOS, you still have hope in recovering your data using a linux installation"

ive got the drive on the IDE now..

i do have the xp disk!!

when i boot up everything is fine..

just when the drive is on the IDE as slave it tries to disk check... but no go... it just detects the serial number.. but doesnt get as far as checking 1/3 etc!!

when its plugged in in the usb....

boot with it in... nothing... plugged in when its booted.. device not recognized.... sometimes a power surge etc.. 1 in 10 times it connects... auto runs... but there is nothing but the root folder.. all folders are empty and all media in the root folder are un usable!!

cheers

 

[Wolfeymole]

Look slow down ok

Let me get this right, you have installed an external maxtor IDE drive internally yes?

Did you set it as Primary Slave or Secondary Master, jumpered accordingly?

 

[farmski]

yes.. maxtor usb drive. is now on the iDE... set as slave...

 

[Tootech]

Can I add some info to this one farmski.

Reading the things you have tried so far, I'd say that a direct copy of the data to another drive will fail. As soon as you drive flips its lid during the copy process its game over, start again, which will result in the same problem. It's not going to work.

How valuable is your data? Would you consider paying for a recovery, or is it more a case of you will get back what you can. If you would consider paying, then we ought not do any more work on it for fear of creating more problems.

The best way, in my opinion to retreive the contents is to image the drive to another hard drive and then pull off the data from image, or write it back to a new drive and access it normally.

There are some imaging tools that will ignore errors as they are copying.

From Windows, Parabens Forensic Replicator (trial will do it) will do it is things are not too bad.

If that fails, Knoppix will do it using dd_rescue.

For both, you need an extra hard drive equal or larger in capacity than your faulty drive.

Links to have a look at:

Knoppix Linux Boot CD, Download Disk and Documents, Discuss, Get Help

Paraben Forensics

Recover Data From a dead hard drive using ddrescue -- Debian Admin

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Dd_rescue

 

[Wolfeymole]

I just noticed you have only one IDE connector on the motherboard.

Ok so you have the maxtor jumpered as Primary Slave which is all it can be on the middle connector on the ribbon cable.

What happens then?

It seems to me like you have tried to use this drive a a boot drive but to be honest I'm confused about just exactly what is going on here.

Please explain in detail what happened from the very beginning.

 

[farmski]

ok!!

i have a maxtor usb drive with all my music.. from various sources.. and programs..from various sources!!
(this is my issue with using outside data retrieval... would i get a legal slap on the wrist?? (am i willing to take the chance??)

the music is the main issue!!



OK!!


i hooked the usb drive to my pc and it failed.. pretty much out of the blue..

after a few attempts at disconnecting reconnecting.. booting and rebooting with and without the usb hdd connected.. i took the hard drive out of the case and connected it via IDE to my computer and run it as slave... i.e no jumpers as indicated on the top of it...

i have used this drive in another computer before.. in this same state successfully... for copying data to another computer which only had usb1 capabilities.. so it was just alot faster to do so..

so...

with the hdd connected to my pc via ide....

booting up the pc..... on boot up windows detects the hdd and tries to run a disk check.. but doesnt actually run through the check sequence!..

so i am forced to do a reboot... cancel the disk check... and continue to windows...

in windows the drive does not initially read... so going through device manager.. scan for hardware changes... the drive comes up... then disconnects...

altho listening to hdd it does not fail... i.e the power is seemingly constant. it doesnt drop out... you know.. that soul destroying sound of intermittent power... power up power down!!


and thats about as far as i can explain...

it does sometimes connect... auto run and get into the root folder... where all folders are empty etc... when both usb and Ide connected... but this if about 1 in 20 times..

is this any clearer... thank you...

please help!!

 

[farmski]

i will try it as master... 1 sec///

 

[Wolfeymole]

Why are you trying it as Master?

It does not contain a boot partition, nothing will happen.

 

[farmski]

ive just moved the jumper to master.. sorry this was seemingly wrong thing to do...

but...

the drive is now recognised and i can get to all the stuff on it..

BUT!!!

its slow as hell... keeps not responding... but i have just been able to play a tune in the hard drive.. and seemingly everything does.... errr.. kind of work... except for it crashing.. have to terminate explorer.exe etc...

but... it does stay on im my computer...

this is frustrating...

i just read primary slave.... and put the jumper on master ds...

well i guess all the stuff is kind of ok on the drive.. or atleast seems to be...

what now???

cheers

 

[Wolfeymole]

Look Farmski let's just stop right here ok.

You are not telling us exactly what you have done here.

You are telling us that a Maxtor external hard drive incorporated as an internal drive is now booting.

This is impossible unless there is an operating system on that drive otherwise you would get a "Primary hard disk not found" error message.

What operating system is on that drive?

 

[farmski]

no... i have my pc

my main hdd...

a maxtor usb hdd thats not working... out of the case.. plugged into the ide port... i miss read what you wrote and put the jumper to primary... but i put it on master...

i didnt mention that i have hirons boot cd in the cd drive at the mo...

when it boots up it asks to boot from hdd...boot cd.. mini windows etc... so i just boot from hdd.. and it just boots up as normal... from the main hdd..


but.... the maxtor hdd is now recognized... but the jumper is set to master on it...

it is booting from the main hdd...


i did just reboot with the maxtor hdd set to slave... but same issue as before...


but with it on master.... it does show up??? i dont quite understand it... but it shows up...

but it is not working properly... really slow... keeps not responding when i go into it... but.... for the first time i have gone through the faulty drive... and clicked on a music file and it has worked...

hope this makes sense

 

[Tootech]

its slow as hell... keeps not responding...

Thats what I was referring to - it will crash when copying.

DON'T let it run chkdsk, thats a sure way to trash a failing drive.

Contents of a recovered drive are not the concern of a data recovery house unless it contains illegal pictures.

I don't see how we can help you unless you stop what you are doing, take a breath and consider the whole situatation.

 

[Wolfeymole]

Does it ask or boot to "MININT"

 

[farmski]

hiron boot cd has mini windows xp...

ive not actually used it before... so i dont know what im doing.. i just got it today..

ive managed to copy one file over....

its just going really slowly.... 60 mins to get 3 gig over... but it is going...

will this make things worse??

is there a way to do it in command promt or from boot... dos

 

[snow]

farmski,

This has become a bit of a mess from our point of view. If you are already copying folders using a method you have tried yourself, without our advice, then the possibility that the drive may fail altogether is now more likely, and you have decreased your options for more controlled data recovery.

Hiren's boot cd contains unregistered versions of commercial programs, and we therefore cannot offer any more support on this subject if you have used such software.

All I can advise at this stage is that you keep trying to retrieve your data, and wish you all the best with it.

This thread is now closed due to violation of Forum Rules 3 & 4.