Copying data from a busted harddrive?

[CitizenSnips]

To make a long story short, my boot harddrive for my Vista 64 computer failed, a Western Digital Caviar 500gig. I would start up, it would try to start Vista, then fail and restart and repeat the process, etc. Tried to run Vista Startup repair unsucessfully, and CHKDSK came back with hundreds of reports of unreadable file segments.

I didn't want to just format the drive since I've got all my files on it and was trying to see if I could still recover them in some way. So I bought a Seagate Barracuda 500gig, installed Vista onto the fresh drive, and it boots fine off of that. My plan was to use the new drive as the boot drive and see if I could just hook up the old one to run it as a D: drive so I could copy files off of it.

However, when I try to boot up my computer with both drives connected, Vista doesn't boot up right, it hangs at the Microsoft Corporation loading screen. When I power down and disconnect the broken WD drive and just boot from the new Seagate, it works fine. I've gone into the BIOS and the Seagate is at the first boot priority.

I'm not too knowledgeable about harddrives and tweaking BIOS settings so I'm not sure what's going on, it seems like powering on with both drives creates some sorta conflict. The old broken HD still has Vista installed onto it, is that the issue? I'm using an abit IP35 pro motherboard as well.

If anyone knows of something I could try I'd be most appreciative. My goal is to just boot off the new Seagate drive and see if the computer will register the failed Western Digital drive as a D: drive so I can see if any files are recoverable off of it.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

That's because the old hard drive is screwing up the boot process

Is it detected in BIOS? Since you aren't getting into windows.

 

[Billb2]

Have you tried the "freezer" trick?

 

[TC91]

Yeah try the freezer trick as suggested by Billb2. Offtopic question for you CitizenSnips, what kind of temps are you getting on your q6600+cnps 9500?

 

[lopri]

nevermind.

 

[CitizenSnips]

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
That's because the old hard drive is screwing up the boot process

Is it detected in BIOS? Since you aren't getting into windows.

It's detected correctly by the BIOS, sorry I didn't mention that in my original post. It shows it as the WD 500 gig harddrive connected to the SATA slot I've got it plugged into on the mobo. Also, when I did the install of Vista on my new Seagate harddrive, the old one was also plugged in, and Vista detected it since I had to choose which drive to install on.

Originally posted by: Billb2
Have you tried the "freezer" trick?

I have no clue what that trick is, so no I haven't.

Originally posted by: TC91
Yeah try the freezer trick as suggested by Billb2. Offtopic question for you CitizenSnips, what kind of temps are you getting on your q6600+cnps 9500?

Been a while since I checked things under load so I don't recall, but on low fan settings I was getting idle temps in the low 30's.

 

[WildW]

Tried using the old drive in a USB caddy? That way you can boot windows before attaching the drive.

 

[Blain]

Skip booting from a HD all together and boot from the UBCD4 Windows.
You can try some repair or at least copy data from one drive to another.

 

[RebateMonger]

Windows doesn't like a failing hard drive and that will slow down or prevent Windows from booting even if it's a secondary drive.

Try attaching the drive via an appropriate USB adapter system (adapter cable, adapter dock, or external drive housing) after Windows has booted. You may find that the drive initially shows up, but then ceases to work. This would be caused by an overheating controller board on the drive, which is fairly common.

If you get the drive connected, do NOT attempt any scans or repairs until you've copied over your most important files. The faster you do that, the better. If Windows or a boot CD can't read the drive, you'll need to try one of the various file recovery programs and see what can be salvaged.

 

[StormSide]

knoppix live cd will tolerate a bad drive sometimes. You might try that booting off that....


http://www.knoppix.net/

 

[Billb2]

Put it in the freezer overnight. Hook it back up quickly. Sometimes you can get 5-20 minutes of access.
It just tightens up all the tolerances, like starting a cold car in the morning.

 

[Matt1970]

Aside from the freezer trick you are pretty well stuck. Any files that are on the drive in any of the bad sectors either won't copy or won't work after copied. You can send the drive off to one of the places that will actually take the drive apart in a clean room and put the platters in a machine but even that doesn't work well with bad sectors.

 

[Slowlearner]

If the faulty drive is being recongized in the bios - there is a strong possibility that data can be recovered.

1. But first, is the data really worth all that trouble and expense? If it is very valuable and you are prepared to spend lots of money - dont mess around - go to any of the following who have clean rooms and other specialized facilities:

Ontrack http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/ or
Seagate http://services.seagate.com/consumer_solutions.aspx or
ESS Data Recovery http://www.essdatarecovery.com/ or
CBL Data Recovery http://www.cbltech.ca/ (US & Canada)
Forenic Strategy http://www.myharddrivedied.com/
http://www.drivesavers.com/

Specializes in Logical Data Recovery:
Dave Mason http://www.davemason.com/drdavesdatarecovery.html

2. If all you have some pictures and documents that you would like to retrieve, and the drive is NOT mechanically damaged (clicking/scratching sounds and such), then follow these steps:

Then use tools like UBCD4Win CD or a Bart PE cd (these have to be prepared before hand : you can't just download them) so even a Knoppix Live CD can be quite handy. You must of course boot off the CD. All these tools will help you copy those files if they can be read? Sometimes just running Chkdsk from UBCD or BartPE fixes the problem.

Second, if the bios recognizes it but these tools can't read the drive - get TestDisk free from http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download - read the TestDisk StepbyStep document first - and if it sees the directories and files: see if it will fix the problem.

Third, if TestDisk can't fix the problem - download GetDataBack available for NTFS - http://www.runtime.org/ - read their instructions carefully, consider the image option if the drive seems to be failing. Run GetDataBack off the C: drive and see what it can recover - it will not recover everything and have trouble if you have bad sectors on the hard drive - so you will have to manually override some files - it may take a couple of hours - it took about 90 min to check out a 80GB WD HD with some 45gigs - once it is done it will display all the directories and files - you can even review the files - if you see the files you want to keep - sign on to their website and purchase a license 79$ for the NTFS version, enter that it in the software and start copying those files to the main hard drive (after checking for free space).

There is a similar programs called Recover My Files available from http://www.getdata.com/ - similar in scope and pricing.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: CitizenSnips
I'm not too knowledgeable about harddrives and tweaking BIOS settings so I'm not sure what's going on, it seems like powering on with both drives creates some sorta conflict. The old broken HD still has Vista installed onto it, is that the issue? I'm using an abit IP35 pro motherboard as well.

Its "hanging" because the hard drive is passing bad sector info to the OS. I just had a similar event where my boot/system drive starting throwing gobs of bad sectors in the middle of a login session. Everything in Windows seemed to grind to a halt, nothing would respond except the mouse. At first I thought it was some code that had the CPU pegged at 100% utilization but the hard disk LED was indicating sustained activity, so I suspected a disk problem. It finally ceased long enough for me to check Event Manager, where I confirmed two dozen or more "disk" events (no SMART warning).

You'll have to use an OS that let's the drive handle its own bad sector detection, reallocation, and whatnot without trying to intervene or manage things. e.g. DOS

I used Norton Ghost in DOS with the -FRO switch to clone the disk over to a replacement. -FRO switch forces Ghost to continue cloning even when bad sectors are encountered. It was 160GB drive with only 48GB data, but still took just over eight hours to clone the drive because bad sectors (along with the -FRO switch) slows Ghost down considerably.