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Please do not post questions about data recovery cases here (use this forum instead). This forum is for topics on finding new ways to recover data. Accessing firmware, writing programs, reading bits off the platter, recovering data from dust...Toshiba MK3265GSX died suddently.Please help
September 7th, 2010, 9:24
Hy to everyone! Without any more introductions, I'll get right to the point: my hdd died suddently.It wasn't making any clicking sound or anything, it hasn't been dropped, splashed,watered or anything like that.It died on me right out of the blue 
. It's a MK3265GSX 2.5" model. My BIOS still sees it, but it can't load Windows,and I can't reinstall a fresh copy either. I mounted it inside a desktop as a slave, the other BIOS sees it also but I can't access my files. I tried booting a Win Xp to install a fresh copy on my desktop PC, and again setup sees it, BUT from the 3 partitions that I have, it saw 2 as completely free (which shouldn't be normal), and one normal (by normal I mean from a total size of 129GB there were only 24GB free, as I knew it was). The electronic board dosen't present any visible defects (burn marks,shorts), and yesterday I took a stetoscop and listened for any strange noises. The drive spins, I can even hear the head moving but still...no go 
.
A friend recommended I use PC Inspector to try and recover my data. It took close to 30hours to finish the scan and when it did, it recognised the file types (audio, doc, pdf, exe) but every file had 1.47MB. Tried to open them, "can't acces file, file is corrupt!". Tried on another pc, same thing.
Today I mounted it back again and tried to boot a Linux recovery cd from a flash usb. My old desktop can't boot from usb,so I tried again to boot a WinXP version to check if it still sees the faulty hdd. Surprise,surprise, now all 3 partitions apear as free
.
I tried mounting back on my laptop and try to run Linux from there...It sees the hdd in BIOS as "Toshiba MK3265GSX (S1)" but when to boot, it gives me the error: " There's a problem with the hdd....read/write error" something like that.
Have I made my problem worse?
Curently I'm a student in Bucharest, Romania, I'm starting my 3'rd year in Computer Science and I can't afford the cost of a recovery data service. I did however went for a free diagnostics, and they told me it could be 2things: either a Firmware problem or a mechanical problem.Both of which are expensive...
Can someone help me please? I would very much like to recover my data. I had some important files on the hdd that I need for my bachelor's degree.
. It's a MK3265GSX 2.5" model. My BIOS still sees it, but it can't load Windows,and I can't reinstall a fresh copy either. I mounted it inside a desktop as a slave, the other BIOS sees it also but I can't access my files. I tried booting a Win Xp to install a fresh copy on my desktop PC, and again setup sees it, BUT from the 3 partitions that I have, it saw 2 as completely free (which shouldn't be normal), and one normal (by normal I mean from a total size of 129GB there were only 24GB free, as I knew it was). The electronic board dosen't present any visible defects (burn marks,shorts), and yesterday I took a stetoscop and listened for any strange noises. The drive spins, I can even hear the head moving but still...no go . A friend recommended I use PC Inspector to try and recover my data. It took close to 30hours to finish the scan and when it did, it recognised the file types (audio, doc, pdf, exe) but every file had 1.47MB. Tried to open them, "can't acces file, file is corrupt!". Tried on another pc, same thing.
Today I mounted it back again and tried to boot a Linux recovery cd from a flash usb. My old desktop can't boot from usb,so I tried again to boot a WinXP version to check if it still sees the faulty hdd. Surprise,surprise, now all 3 partitions apear as free
.I tried mounting back on my laptop and try to run Linux from there...It sees the hdd in BIOS as "Toshiba MK3265GSX (S1)" but when to boot, it gives me the error: " There's a problem with the hdd....read/write error" something like that.
Have I made my problem worse?
Curently I'm a student in Bucharest, Romania, I'm starting my 3'rd year in Computer Science and I can't afford the cost of a recovery data service. I did however went for a free diagnostics, and they told me it could be 2things: either a Firmware problem or a mechanical problem.Both of which are expensive...
Can someone help me please? I would very much like to recover my data. I had some important files on the hdd that I need for my bachelor's degree.
Re: Toshiba MK3265GSX died suddently.Please help
September 8th, 2010, 1:28
There's no 'free' solution. Sorry.
Re: Toshiba MK3265GSX died suddently.Please help
September 8th, 2010, 4:28
I'm truly sorry that there may be no "free" solution, because if there were, I would be only too glad to offer it to you. ;-|
In hindsight it would probably have been better for you to have attempted to clone your drive, and then work on the clone, rather than allowing PC Inspector to hammer away at it for 30 hours.
If DIY is the only option, then perhaps you could limit your cloning attempts to the partition that is of most importance. Hopefully all your important data are confined to a single partition. If so, then you could determine this partition's starting and ending LBAs by referring to the partition table in sector 0. Then use dd_rescue or ddrescue to copy this range of LBAs to your clone drive.
Depending on the damage, you may be able to see the partition table and boot sector with Microsoft's Sector Inspector:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SecInspect.zip
Extract the above archive to the one folder and execute the SIrun.bat file. The procedure will generate a report file named SIout.txt.
In hindsight it would probably have been better for you to have attempted to clone your drive, and then work on the clone, rather than allowing PC Inspector to hammer away at it for 30 hours.
If DIY is the only option, then perhaps you could limit your cloning attempts to the partition that is of most importance. Hopefully all your important data are confined to a single partition. If so, then you could determine this partition's starting and ending LBAs by referring to the partition table in sector 0. Then use dd_rescue or ddrescue to copy this range of LBAs to your clone drive.
Depending on the damage, you may be able to see the partition table and boot sector with Microsoft's Sector Inspector:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SecInspect.zip
Extract the above archive to the one folder and execute the SIrun.bat file. The procedure will generate a report file named SIout.txt.
Re: Toshiba MK3265GSX died suddently.Please help
September 18th, 2010, 12:22
thanks fzabkar. I'll give it a try
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