Drive Probs

[Nephilim]

My brand new 320GB Seagate crashed this morning, i don't care f@#$ fuh this drive so please no 'XYZ have it for ABC price'

All i care about is my data, more than 10yrs of accumulated and irreplaceable data, drive is seen in the bios, but not in windows, thought it could be driver prob, but checked in a machine the drive is known to work in and nada. I need to know what course of action I could take, if there is any software that i can use, don't need to be windows specific.

And also what course of action you guys use during a crysis like this...i dun nearly gone and put the thing in the freezer to try a lil sum hoss...

here is what happens...

-machine boots
-drive sounds like ah man drop ah marble on tarazzo
-drive goes silent, sloes down boot to a crawl
-nun in my computer or device manager

fellas ah real desperate ah get insta-sick this morning just thinking about how much ah loss...

never will i buy a Seagate drive again, my f$#%in' 5yr old WD drives run 24/7 with out so much as a peep...sigh.../wrist

[daniboy79]

i think there are some fabulous Drive recovery utilities on The UBCD, and even the Heirens Boot CD.

failing that; Sax iz de Man!! he pull stuff of drives that i nearly throw 'way with his Magical Crystal Ball!

[Spazosaurus]

Hmmm *Captain downloads ultimate boot cd and Heirens.

It would be interesting to hear from Sax on this matter seeing as he is the defacto resident hdd expert.

But i've gotta ask why oh why you have alll that important data on ONE hard drive? You should know better.

[phoenix31tt]

But i've gotta ask why oh why you have alll that important data on ONE hard drive? You should know better.

agreed and dont bash seagate cuz u got 1 rotten apple... it happens with every manufacturer... except some produce more than others a la maxtor...

and that sounding like a mechanical failure in the drive... indicating real stress for recovery

[Nephilim]

assess the dmg earlier things not looking so bleak atm

+music
+video (anime, tv series, etc)
+applications

-pics
-some docs

agreed and dont bash seagate cuz u got 1 rotten apple... it happens with every manufacturer... except some produce more than others a la maxtor...

This is the 3rd Seagate drive I own. Other 2 are fine--ish...one MBR got raped and the other have some bad sectors...normal thing for drives that I assume was just bad luck...
The particular drive I have now, a 320, had stellar reviews, and for the avg desktop drive was pretty fast.

I now base my decision to stay away from them on the fact that I have WDs here that running fine for yrs, yet for some reason seagate's letting me down. If they work for you, then by all means go ahead, but I gonna stick with the brands I have no probs with, ironically, the Maxtor (which is owned by Seagate) drives i own, never give probs, still in my pops old machine, running xubuntu + azureus web interface

But i've gotta ask why oh why you have alll that important data on ONE hard drive? You should know better.

In short,denial.
I put too much faith in sale numbers,and hearing that Seagate is the shizznit.
First time in years I move so lax, and go figure, is JUST when you let yuh guard down yuh get rape.  *chainsaw tuh chest*

I gettin' a 400 replacement, via warranty, no complaints, but i may invest in another 400 for paranoia sake...

and that sounding like a mechanical failure in the drive... indicating real stress for recovery

think is that myself after reading some stuff on the internets...apparently the read head kocking against the hdd chassis 

Heiren's has some nice hdd tools dani that already in boot...

[Saxito Pau]

*Sax humbly tries to live up to his unexpected reputation...*

and that sounding like a mechanical failure in the drive... indicating real stress for recovery

My thoughts as well. It sounds like a head/spindle crash. Nasty sound I gather you heard. I would have rather classic bad sectors in this case.

Spinrite 6 hopefully will help. I saw in the glory days of TechTV that it does a much better job than CHKDSK of recovering bad sectors. I've used it myself a few times to overcome -minor- bad sector issues long enough to get off the data. If the drive is still showing up in the BIOS, then I say give spinrite a try. Use it on a spare machine though - this thing takes a long time - a few hours up to a good full day or two - maybe longer - to scan one drive.

ISO files of such can be 'discovered' online.

another program I like for data recovery is GetDataBack. Good stuff. If the drive at least shows up in device manager or disk management, most time it'll do the job. Just be prepared to dedicates several hour to the task.

Anything beyond that is probably too risky for to use short of paying true data recovery companies: (knocking drive to shift the head is a hit or miss tactic, opening drive to move head, swapping circuit boards, etc) and i really ent want you to lose your data if those tactics fail.

BTW, is this drive IDE or SATA?

As for data backups, I have ALL my data on 2 locations at given point int time. In fact I'm due for another backup asap. I lost data twice due to hard drive failure. Both times the drive literally went out smoking. My policy to my customer on data backup/recovery:

- Techie is not responsible for data loss during services rendered.
- Customer is fully responsible for backing up data on a regular basis.
- Data backup/recovery is billed separately from other repairs and is not guaranteed.

*SaxMan assumes NO LIABILITY whatsoever for any losses which may occur as a result of use of the advice provided above. Follow these instructions at your own risk!!*

EDIt- on seing Nephilim's post:
Good neews. now get your stuff OFF!! NOW!! You have no idea how long it'll last.

[Nephilim]

showing up in bios it is as well as in seagate's tool, it doing a full scan as i type, already got it on a separate machine...

SATA

[Saxito Pau]

niceness... I am glad things are going better