Seagate 7200.8 Trouble

[imported_segagenesis]

I probably should not have mentioned on the news comments the other day that Seagate drives have always worked good for me, because after 5 years the inevitable finally happened.

One of my recently purchased drives (a 7200.8 200GB SATA) has developed the oh so dreaded click of death, something I have not heard since getting rid of my last IBM drive ages ago. After running the SeaTools daignostics I have discovered that sector 212 is defective. Now this normally would not be so bad... except the fact that some vital NTFS info is held there. Any attempts to boot Windows with this drive attached = frozen computer. I even let it sit overnight and it just sits there clicking... trying valiantly to regain the bad sector to no avail. Linux (rescue disk or otherwise) isn't much help either noting that the filesystem is corrupt and I should run chkdsk on Windows... gee, I could have told you that!

Because of this I am at a loss at how to attempt to get data back. Apart from that one sector the rest of the disk reads fine... so the data can be recovered. The problem is most of the recovery tools I have tried try to read the MBR/Partition table/NTFS MFT thats at the beginning of the disk and as a result lock up the drive and the OS.

Is there any hope I have to recovering this data? It seems my issue is I cant get the drive to just SHOW UP in any recovery software because its busy with sector 212 and wont respond.

 

[Harvey]

You may be able to read the drive if you boot to another drive and connect the problem drive as a slave. If you can't read it, there are companies that specialize in retrieving data from dead drives, but they're pretty pricey so you'll really have to need the data to be worth doing it.

For future reference, I always by drives in pairs, put one in a mobile rack and use Norton Ghost to clone mhy main drive. The cloned drive is fully functional with no further setup or installation so I'm always as good as my last Ghost copy.

If you don't know what a mobile rack is, check here. It's a way to make standard drives removable.

 

[imported_segagenesis]

Oh, I've been there before. I have been trying to do what you describe but it wont work because Windows still tries to read the problem sector when it boots and then the drive is unavailable. The data I would like to get back but its not worth the $1,000 or so it would cost for a recovery service. I just think its idiotic one little sector is keeping me from reading my data.

And I have an earlier (older) copy on another drive. Just I've made quite a few changes since then so... you get my point. I dislike removable trays after having a few actually cause data corruption on me years ago. I know these guys make tank trays but at $150 for a SATA tray... too much for 2 of them at the moment.

Currently attempting EasyRecovery for DOS...

 

[birdpup]

Welcome to the forums!!!

You mention the drive recognition fails on sector 212. Try waiting longer, several hours if needed, and the drive should eventually move past the bad sector. The drive is not failing and stopping at that point, it should continue. It has helped other people in the past to sit and wait it out and they were able to successfully recover their data that way.

Check the following thread for numerous tips regarding data recovery.

Hard Drive, Partition, Data Recovery and Diagnostic Resources

Of the following tools, I prefer GetDataBack but there are people who prefer each of the others.

[*]Data Recovery Programs

• TestDisk
• R-Studio
• Runtime's GetDataBack
• Ontrack's Easy Recovery Pro
• Quetek
• File Scavenger
• HDD Regenerator
• Freeware Data Recovery Tools ***Free***
• PC Inspector ***Free***
• ACR Data Recovery
• Digital Camera Memory Recovery: PC Inspector

[*]Rescue Disks

• UBCD4Win
• BartPE
• Insert
• Knoppix

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Wow. I hope my 7200.8 doesn't fail on me like that.

I have had an IBM Deathstar 75GXP (the biggest deathstar of them all) and have had it RMAed twice and I have dealt with recovery many many times.

GetDataBack worked for me really well, so you might wanna give that a try.

 

[imported_segagenesis]

Well thank you for the information, I did check out that thread earlier but I am familiar with several of those programs (have used rescue disks, getdataback, ontrack before). My problem as I stated is just the halting at sector 212 because of Windows trying to read the MFT and getting hung up (doh!). I *havent* tried BartPE yet, however... it may be worth a try to see if I can pull of a CHKDSK and let it sit. I may just setup a spare computer with the drive and let it run for at least 24 hours and see if it can get past that stubborn sector. The main issue really with Windows based recovery tools is that the drive will not show up in Windows because it is stuck on that sector, and I can only assume Windows wont even attach it because it wont respond.

DLeRium I'm not worried about the reliability overall because I believe the fault originated out of my UPS catching fire (Note to self, never trust APC again) and as a result my equipment getting shutdown prematurely. Either power surge or something