Hi everyone, first time visitor to this forum here.

Some time ago a friend of mine gave me their laptop and asked me to attempt to recover the data from the HDD, as their child had knocked the laptop off a high place and subsequently ended up with a smashed screen, broken keyboard, etc. At the time I thought I could just pull the drive and chuck it in my own machine, however this doesn't seem to be the case.

When attempting to mount the drive in Windows 10 the disk management facility shows an unrecognised drive of unknown capacity, and fails to initialise the drive entirely. I cannot format or otherwise change the drive settings, nor does it have a drive letter assigned to it.

Mounting the drive in Ubuntu gives a more interesting result. The default disks facility shows all partitions currently on the drive along with partition sizes and device ID's, however there is no other information past this (See attachment 'Image 1' below). Viewing the drives SMART data reveals an overall assessment that the drive is likely to fail soon, due to a high reallocated sector count (See attachment 'Image 2' below).

I've tried to run 'ntfxfix' on each partition individually (in an attempt to at least mount the drive and backup the data), resulting in the command getting stuck at 'Mounting volume' until I close the terminal. I've also tried 'ntfxfix' on the entire drive, wherein I get the following output:



I've also tried running the drive internally via SATA and externally via USB, both have the same result.

I'm no hard drive expert (clearly, hence why I've come here), but at the same time my friend is unwilling to pay to have the data on the drive recovered professionally. They're not overly bothered if the data is lost completely, so long as the drive itself can be salvaged and reused? So, with that in mind if anyone has any suggestions I'd be more than grateful to hear them. If you require more information just let me know and I'll happily oblige.

To be honest, if the drive itself is worth more than the data then you are wasting your time.

This drive will never be usable again, or at the very least not to be trusted.

It will almost certainly have some physical media issues, and the problems you are seeing are a symptom of the underlying issues and not the actual problem.

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Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

As far as sending it off to a data recovery centre goes, it's just not going to happen. This is what I suggested my friend do in the first place but they're unwilling to pay the £100 it would likely cost. For what's actually on the drive it's not worth it.

I was afraid the conclusion would be that the drive is essentially useless. That's a shame, not going to lie, but not unexpected. If there really is no chance of salvaging the drive then I suppose all I can do is try and attempt to recover what data I can using the programs Spildit suggested. If nothing else it'll be a learning experience for myself.

Ah well, thanks again guys for the replies/suggestions. I'll see what I can do in the morning.

Hddsuperclone is very good considering it's freeware (for now), I have had a play with it. Used it on a sickly USB stick

As spildit says, clone it with that and then use something like DMDE to extract the data, then scrap the drive.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

I'll be taking a look into hddsuperclone later tonight, can't say I've ever attempted to recover data before let alone heard of that particular tool, so I'll be doing plenty of research before attempting anything. If you have any advice as to what precautions to take beforehand I'd be more than happy to listen to it? Rest assured however I'm not going to just blindly jump into this. I've been that ignorant before (ah the joys of blissful, arrogant youth), not making that kind of mistake again.

Thanks again!

Many thanks for the advice Spildit, much appreciated! I'll spend some time going through those links over the next few days between work and whatnot. I much prefer to understand what something means these days rather than just blindly follow tutorials. The links you've provided seem extremely thorough, just what I'm looking for.

Cheers!