HDD data recovery :(

[ImmaculateChimp]

Well, about a week ago we had some bad weather around where I live and it killed my old laptop hdd. I was wondering if anybody knows if there is any I can recover the data(as much of it as possible, I had a bunch of music and stuff on it that I'd really hope not to have to write off). Any and all help is appreciated!

 

[TangentDelta]

Write a live boot CD of a small linux distro and go from there. I'd go with puppy linux, since it's what I use to recover files.

 

[elwing]

what do you mean by "it killed my HDD"? only the HDD is killed? does it still power up? or does it just shutdowned your laptop in the middle of some write and you're now with a HDD that won't boot anymore?

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

I used vague language because I'm not entirely sure what all is acutally borked with the laptop. No, actually since the storm there are other issues as well. Most of the time when I press the power button the little fan spins for a few seconds before the whole laptop just shuts off..on those occasions, the screen doesn't power up.. rarely (like, twice) when I turn it on and it actually does more than spin the fan for a few seconds, I can use the BIOS to try and boot the hdd, but it says something about Windows not being on the hdd, and that's about all I can do with it now..

 

[elwing]

I think HDD are quite resilient... I'dd try to take it out and connect it on another computer first... that's not hard and there's much chance it's still working normally...

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

Well, I'll need to buy an external enclosure(seriously, this laptop is using an old "IBM Travelstar" ^_^ hdd). If I can still harvest all the data from the hdd I'm just fine with that, but I'll have to order the enclosure online, so it'll be a few days before I can report on if I was successful or not, though I'm not optimistic on my chances..

 

[elwing]

ho, it's not a sata disk?

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

nope, it's an ATA/IDE!

 

[elwing]

doh, that suck... before buying something you might want to try with a bootable CD as mentionned...

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

doh, that suck... before buying something you might want to try with a bootable CD as mentionned...

I can't... it looks like the laptop won't read from the disc drive any more.

 

[TangentDelta]

doh, that suck... before buying something you might want to try with a bootable CD as mentionned...

I can't... it looks like the laptop won't read from the disc drive any more.

Ah, in that case the IDE controler might be fried.

The strange thing about this is, the charging brick usually takes the hard hit from the surge, and the hard drive only gets some minor corruption. Must have been a shoddy charging brick.

 

[elwing]

the ide controller or more generally a good part of the mainboard... just hoping your HDD is not fried and you won't throw money at an useless enclosure...

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Sounds like something wrong with the power supply or the motherboard. Your data should be safe.

 

[elwing]

Î I hope so, but when you start messing with voltage spike you've no guarantee...

 

[yoshi41dragon]

You don't need to buy an enclosure, a cheap USB HDD adapter is enough to copy just data from it. Something like this...


http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B001OORMVQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341845148&sr=8-1&keywords=ide%2Fsata+to+usb


And it works for SATA as well.

 

[elwing]

first price enclosure are in the same price range, but they'll support only one type of interface generally... and will not have an additional power supply, just thoses losy double USB cable...

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

doh, that suck... before buying something you might want to try with a bootable CD as mentionned...

I can't... it looks like the laptop won't read from the disc drive any more.

Ah, in that case the IDE controler might be fried.

The strange thing about this is, the charging brick usually takes the hard hit from the surge, and the hard drive only gets some minor corruption. Must have been a shoddy charging brick.

I'm sorry, it was late at the time, when I said disc drive I meant cd/dvd disc drive (although at this point it feels kinda like arguing semantics, something/s is/are definitely fried..). It seems the only things I can do with the laptop now are navigate the boot interface and use the BIOS.

You don't need to buy an enclosure, a cheap USB HDD adapter is enough to copy just data from it. Something like this...


http://www.amazon.co...ide/sata to usb


And it works for SATA as well.

that is an interesting option, it looks like it provides a few more options in case I need to do something like this again with a different hdd(I hope the build quality is good). The enclosure I was looking at wouldn't work for anything else, and I'm not sure if it even comes with a power cord(though it apparently can connect to one).


$8.00(more or less) isn't much to worry about gambling away and it's certainly worth trying, but in the event I can't get much, or anything with this method, is that it, or are there other options anyone knows of?

 

[Titcher]

If you hook the drive up to another system and are unable to get it recognised you may be out of luck. However I've heard of people putting hard drives in freezer bags, freezing them for a day or two, and hooking them back up, with the temperature difference causing enough retraction/expansion to get things going temporarily.


So essentially, if you can't get the drive recognised with the $8 adapter (highly recommended by the way, I have one, just be careful with the power brick) then you're probably out of luck.