Hi all,

My external harddrive(ntfs, 2 TB, Western digital elements, WD20EARS) became corrupt after a not successful copying of files action in Linux-Backtrack operating system. During the copy action, the Linux OS hybernated automatically to the standby situation, which caused for the freezing of the copy action. After the freezing i tried to cancel the copy action, which failed, and crashed. I could not stop the crash, so i removed the usb cable of the harddrive. And after this the harddrive was not recognized anymore by several computers where i have tried to read it. I tried everything and nothing solved the problem.

After this i have opened the original casing of the external harddrive, and removed the internal sata harddrive. I have tried the read this internal sata harddrive with several computers, but did not succeed, getting error messages from bios like "Master Harddisk Error", meaning it didnt recognize it.

Then, i tried to read the sata harddrive with a docking station and another new usb casing. This time the computers did recognize it, but in disk management "Harddrive not initialized" error and reported that the harddrive is 0kb. Both with casing, dockingstation and internal sata, the harddrive makes a ticking sound, trying to read the harddrive for a long time, but failing each time. I have tried to read it with the Gparted Linux OS. Gparted was busy for hours to read the harddrive(in the docking station or casing), but failed finally with some I/O error popup.

When i went to a computer shop they said the harddrive was recognized as 2 TB(so not 0 KB) but it was impossible to reach the folders/files. They told me the problem could maybe be solved, when replacing the circuitboard. They also told that maybe the cache could have been damaged.

I can say that i have never dropped the harddrive or did not damage the hardware components of the harddrive, the problem did happen only because of a software error. So how can i solve this problem and save some of the files on the harddrive? Will replacing the circuit board solve the problem? I have heard of people with similar problems(with Seagate harddrives), who had solved it by updating the firmware of the harddrive(firmware only available at the office of Seagate support centre). I see you cannot download the firmware of Western Digital publically from their website, so should i call Western Digital support to ask for this firmware update? Will this fix the problem? Another thing i have not tried is a sata to usb adapter(not the same as usb dockingstation or casing). Will this make any difference?
Besides these options, what else can i try to successfully read my corrupt harddrive?

First step is to make an image of your drive.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

Do you mean a picture of the harddrive? Which side of the harddrive should i take a picture of, the side with the pcb?

I know I should not laugh, but that was funny. I needed that for today

what he means by image is a clone of your hard drive. A sector by sector mirror image of it. So that you can work on the clone and if you make a mistake you can always re-clone it from the original again.

How can you make such an image of the harddrive when it is not recognized?

If the BIOS is reporting a capacity of 0KB, then the answer is that you can't. Sometimes a USB-SATA bridge board will report a capacity of 2TB when the drive is inaccessible, so that may account for the conflicting report from your docking station.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

What do you think the problem of my harddrive could be? And do you have suggestions on which steps i must follow to solve the problem? Do you think that, based on my descriptions in the first post, that the cause of the problem could be the circuitboard? Or is it something else? I know that i didnt physically break parts of the harddrive, so the only problem is caused by i/o software crashes.

I only have a little time, so just to add to the comments you have received already:


If you are trying to say that the OS damaged your disk drive (which is what I think you also tried to say in the first post), then I disagree. IMHO the OS reacted to a disk drive problem, and not the other way around.

Then the only cause i could think of is that the harddrive was already damaged before i bought it, because i know for sure i didnot damage the harddrive. But then also, why did this problem occur just after the hybernating error/bug? Is it possible, that when you dont safely remove the usb harddrive when it is crashed(no other option), this could damage hardware-components of the harddrive? If yes, what part could have been damaged? And how can i fix it? Which steps do you suggest for a possible recover situation?

And what is the limit of hours you can let a harddrive work, without causing it to overheat and become damaged?

You are asking lots of questions, some of which are hypothetical (i.e. you don't know if they apply to your specific disk drive fault or not). Detailed answers would probably take 1-2 hours to type, and I don't have that time at the moment. I also avoid giving long answers to hypothetical questions, as I am usually wasting my time.

Therefore I will just answer briefly a couple of points - if that helps you, then good. If you don't like the fact that I didn't answer all your questions, then just ignore this reply, and wait for someone else to answer all your questions.


Disks can stop working correctly, for many different reasons. The exact cause of complex faults, is often difficult to accurately diagnose remotely.


The disk problem did not occur just after that - it actually occurred before that. The fact that the copying I/O was stalled (due to a disk problem) then caused Linux to believe that the system was idle, and so it entered whatever power-saving you had configured. I have seen this happen several times, with faulty disks.

One of the first points you need to consider, is whether you want to take the risks of DIY diagnosis (or recovery) attempts. Search the forum for discussions about DIY - I won't repeat myself yet again here.

You state that "the harddrive makes a ticking sound, trying to read the harddrive for a long time, but failing each time". I'm not a data recovery professional, but this sounds like an internal fault, possibly bad heads. It does not sound like a PCB problem. However, the easiest thing to try is to gently clean the preamp pads with a soft white pencil eraser. Perhaps you'll be lucky.

See J1 at the bottom left of the following photo:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7150/6491 ... cb2b_z.jpg

If you choose to replace the PCB, then you will need to transfer the chip at U12 (left of SDRAM) to your donor PCB. Some PCB suppliers (eg http://www.donordrives.com) will do this for free.

Otherwise, you could try the following free online diagnostic service:
http://www.hdd-tools.com/products/rrs/

It claims to be able to "diagnose and recover HDD firmware area". I have yet to see anyone use it successfully, though.

One other thing to try is to read the firmware modules using NazYura's utilities:
http://nazyura.hardw.net/000006.htm

These utilities were written for earlier IDE models, so they may not be able to read all the firmware modules, but they may at least read the important ones.

There is also this one, but you'll need to brush up on your Russian:
http://travibot.com/WDMarvel.rar

BTW, you'll need to configure your SATA controller in your BIOS for legacy IDE mode, otherwise NazYura's utilities won't see your drive.

That said, even if you do retrieve these modules, it will do you no good if your drive has a bad head.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

What was not said : playing with commands, tools and other stuff without knowing what to do - and nobody will guide you - can kill your drive or chances to get data in a FLASH. Just don't cry if it happens.
You have also posted in other thread about swapping heads. Assuming this thread is real, scrubbing youtube and the internet you'll find a lot of videos but unfortunately there aren't where data is successfully recovered. Without cleanroom , equipment and years of experience WDs are a nightmare especially when it comes at HSA work. Good luck.

Some not so good advice in this thread so be carefull!

I would suggest to first learn to walk before you try to run!

Just about the only thing you can do on your own is to do some carefull checks in Mhdd or Victoria. You would need to connect the drive directly to a pc motherboard with the bios set to ide/ata/compatibility/legacy mode.

Check drive details.
Check smart report.
Scan media every 5 to 10% or so if able to see if sectors are readable (if you can get this far).

Remember any fiddling could kill the drive and or destroy the data.
And if the data is not important then just discard the drive, rma it and move on.

Anything in particular?


I would suggest that people read the OP's post again.



If the drive is reporting a capacity of 0KB to BIOS (as I pointed out in my first post), then no amount of fiddling with logical recovery software or utilities such as MHDD will extract even a single byte of data.


If the data are not important, then the OP has nothing to lose and everything to gain. In any case we may all learn something from his attempts.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I suggest you again read what I suggested to the op!

Bearing in mind the op understands an image to be a picture then my suggestions are to attempt a diagnosis not a recovery!

So in Mhdd or Victoria it is possible to check if the drive details are correct.
Smart details probably won't be available but this also needs to be checked.
The status registers need to be checked. Does the drive come ready? What do the registers show whilst carrying out each simple test?

All this would help towards a clearer diagnosis.