Hard Drive Woes

[boozie]

I restarted my PC because I was having issues installing a steam patch. Upon restarting, my computer wouldn't load windows nor would it load in safe mode / repair mode.

I have a SSD and an HDD, if I unplug the HDD the computer will start up fine. If I load up BIOS with the HDD plugged in it will recognize it. If I plug the HDD in with a SATA cable after the computer has booted, the device manager will recognize the HDD, but the computer just thinks a bunch and explorer stops responding when it tries to add the Drive to My Computer.

So it sounds like the HDD is just done, what should my next step be outside of ordering a new one? What other means should I try to recover the information and/or fix the problem?

[e] I also tried plugging in the HDD as an external USB HD and explorer stopped responding then as well. I downloaded the WD DLGDIAG software, but I can't run it on the drive if it's disabled in device manager.

Running 64-bit win 7 and the HD is WD10EALX (1 TB Blue) and under 3 years old so still under warranty but I'd much rather salvage the data.

 

[jolancer]

might want to live boot linux and see if the drive is detected and or readable. before moving to other avenues.
http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

if its detectable, and not dead. some of the data should be recoverable at least. If its readable that would be nice and easy.

theres a gui interface with that if you type
$ wizard

i rarely used the gui so not sure if it auto mounts partitions or has a gui partition manager
if not the command exampls are:

to list partitions
$ fdisk -l

to create mount point
$ mkdir /mnt/<create_name>

mount partition ex.
$ mount /dev/sda# /mnt/<name>

to list Mounted Partitions
$ df -h

to show size of dir
$ du -sh /mnt/dir

to list dir contents
$ ls -l /mnt/dir

if linux does not detect it or read it. for others to more easily help. may want to specify your Operating system version? and HDD? how old is it?

 

[boozie]

Here is where I am at so far. I mounted the drive which involved some "fixing".

Sorry for the bad photo, it was from my phone.

If I do the du -sh it stalls. If I do the ls -l commands it will list after ~2 minutes.

I can use the midnight commander program to browse the directories. I plan to just copy the files over to a new HDD when it shows up on Tuesday. Is there something else I should be doing or watch out for? Should I be worried I am just copying over the problem to the new HDD?

 

[jolancer]

I collect information but am no expert. My hardware is old but never had such an issue. I don't know what would cause your HDD to do that. Besides the obvious it had some issue corruption perhaps with the partition table or file system or something.

your HDD is deff newer than mine. but if its making strange noises or you suspect something is physically wrong with it, in that instance the safest thing to do is leave it off untill you have your replacement HDD and copy your data over first. If the data is important to you.

bellow is what i use to use to test hdds

note first, everything in linux is lower/UPPER case sensitive,
and these output help info
$ command -h
$ command --help
$ man command
("Q" quits the manual page) (shit+pgup/pgdown navigates page)

s.m.a.r.t commands

quick overall health check
$ smartctl -H /dev/sda

Short Self Test
$ smartctl -t short /dev/sda

Extended Self Test, 1.5hrs per ~100GB
$ smartctl -t long /dev/sda

show ALL SMART Info
$ smartctl -a /dev/sda

MHDD can be loaded from systemrccd's boot screen selection menu under addition tools or something dont remember exactly. Without selecting anything destructive you can safely scan the entire drive... i believe you just select the "#" then press> "F2" then> "F4" then "F4"... i think, the basic key function are shown on top and scroll on bottom. note- it might not detect the drive tho unless SATA mode is set to IDE instead of AHCI in BIOS options.

in windows, can check the filesystem by running check disk command, replace "E" with drive letter to be scanned.
note - if you use any linux partitioning or filesystem modifying tools on ntfs partitions its always a good idea to run check disk in windows if its a drive your not discarding
> chkdsk /x /f /r /v E:

 

[boozie]

Well windows won't add it to a drive. If the HDD is plugged in, windows won't load (even though the OS is on the SSD). If I plug it in while windows is already loaded, explorer crashes unless I have the drive disabled.

The linux commands could help though. I feel like I will be able to copy everything, I'm just worried about duplicating the issue on the new drive.

 

[jolancer]

sorry i don't see your image so not sure if that would explain it.. but if windows can't read it after linux has been able to mount it. I'm not sure whats going on, if no one else responds who may know. Safest thing to do would be to definitly just wait for the backup drive first and copy your data over.

you might want to check the windows SSD befor that though for any virus or infection that could of perhaps been the cause of the issue. just incase, so the new HDD won't suffer the same fate. I honestly don't know if a virus or sumthing coudl do that in the first place. but google or starting a new thread topic on the issue im sure you can find the answer.

if its not resolved b4 then. make sure you format the new HDD under windows first before mounting it in linux... linux can format ntfs, but i believe its always safest to use the native application for the filesystem format your going to be using.

EDIT: i put some cmd's there for reference, but du -sh scans the size of the entire directory, so if you used it on the root directory of the 1TB HDD, and if you have a Lot of files it will take a bit of time to scan the entire disk. Most linux distro's are Live bootable these days, so also if its annoying.. main stream ones like ubuntu have a more standard gui.
linux copy commands: after drive are mounted

$ cp -a /mnt/dir /mnt/destination

i know -a stands for archive but i honestly havn't used rsync yet. i saved this cmd from somewere though, can check its help file for the syntax reference
$ rsync -avnu --stats --progress /mnt/dir /mnt/destination

 

[ch33zw1z]

Backup the data asap, using linux is fine...just get critical data asap before it gets worse.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=608&sid=2&lang=en

That link is for western digital bootable diags (aka diags for DOS). After you backup your data, run that and see what it says.

Just get the critical data asap...and count yourself lucky if there's no corruption yet.

 

[boozie]

SMART short run says:


Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 80% 21194 1346168423


I'm assuming I basically need to power this thing down until I can copy stuff over, not really sure how to make sense of that.

 

[ch33zw1z]

yes, power it down until you can get the data off of it.

Read Failure 80%? doesn't sound too good...but maybe good enough to get some files off of it.

This is the time to realize that local backups, or even "cloud" backups of critical data are important.

 

[boozie]

yes, power it down until you can get the data off of it.

Read Failure 80%? doesn't sound too good...but maybe good enough to get some files off of it.

This is the time to realize that local backups, or even "cloud" backups of critical data are important.

I have backups of the most critical stuff.

What is the easiest means for me to copy the files that can be copied? Do I do it all at once or folder by folder?

 

[ch33zw1z]

Since it's failing, I would go folder by folder aiming for what I need first, then what I want.

If you got backups, awesome. Then any type of recovery is just practice

 

[jolancer]

what ch33zw1z said is a good idea... after that depending on how much you want the rest of the data, or how much practice you want recovering, or if you actaully get enjoyment from this lol..

after you try and get the data off you wanted.. could then run ddrescue on the drive. its a command already included on sysrcd. I havn't needed to use it, otherwise i'd just post the syntax you need for the cmd. i dont know tho, but heres the manual..

http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html

short quote from its main page
"Ddrescue does not write zeros to the output when it finds bad sectors in the input, and does not truncate the output file if not asked to. So, every time you run it on the same output file, it tries to fill in the gaps without wiping out the data already rescued."

theres probably tones of tutorials online for ddrescue