HDD - Seagate Barracuda LP 1.5 TB
Model - ST31500541AS
Firmware - CC94

Issue - Drive would appear mounted, and a logical letter would be assigned to the drive. However, when trying to access the drive on windows 7, and clicked on it, it would take forever and nothing would come up. Device Manager would show the drive, disk management would not. Fast forward a couple of months...Drive wasn't recognized in BIOS, or windows 7 or any where else!!!

Two weeks ago, I needed my daughter's baby pictures from the drive, and I connected the drive as internal (SATA) and tried to access the drive. The drive suddenly appeared mounted but nothing happened.

Tried Recuva recovery and other free trials - drive would appear as if ready, but when selected for recovery, it would take forever...tried HDD regenerator (scan and repair) - scan would run till 47MB and then an error would pop-up saying 'drive is not ready'. Drive was connected as IDE compatible. Other software's were all the same.

Two days ago, I brought a WD 2 TB drive and since then I have been trying to clone/image - and so on...tried Acronis and i would get an error saying ' failed to read sector 63 on drive 4'...i would have to un-plug the usb cable, and then an 'ignore sector' button would appear, and this took forever...

guys from my work from the helpdesk, gave me an 'universal boot cd' to try, and when i used the HD Tune up and scanned the drive for errors, only one error popped up.

Finally, after endless hours of browsing and reading, I ended up on HDDguru and started HDD RAW COPY Tool V 1.2.

The software not only recognized the bad drive as a source (miracle really), it also was able to lock it, and was able to progress and ask for target and so on...

Issue: - Since the copy started around 3 hours or so ago, there have been many many errors (similar to the one below)-



Error seems to happen at every 4096th LBA sector; and at every '2097152' offset - in increments

Questions:
1. With all these errors being spit up, do you guru's/experts and god-like beings, think, an Raw copy is being made successfully?
2. current sector is at 10,919,808 but the progress is at 0% complete (i understand that this disk has a total of 2,930,277,168?
3. Lastly, can you tell me whether the tool would have spit out an error by now and would have likely aborted if the RAW copy program wasnt working?

I am desperate to save any data (pictures, videos) of my daughter and i am hoping that some of you can help me figure out whether the copy process is working as it should? I am assuming at this rate the copy could go on for a week/or even a month, before i know whether it is successful...

A very humble dad trying to do what he can to save memories!

The drive is likely to have multiple problems. Bad sectors and firmware issues. Hopefully, no mechanical. However, the more stress is put on the drive as is, the higher the chance of worsening the drive's condition.

Strongly recommend to power it off.

Need a good diagnostic by a professional. If you decide to send it out to somebody, choose wisely to who.

I assume your location is Richmond, VA?

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Thanks labtech! And, yes, I am from Richmond, va!

I know I am taking a risk trying to get an raw image of the drive...if this doesnt work, then I guess, the only choice is to turn in to the experts.

However, HDD RAW copy so far was the only tool that was able to mount, read and go through the sectors...so, a little hope that I might get something off of the disk...if not, as you suggest, i am turning it in!

It is a very thin line between getting something and permanent damage.

Best wishes. I hope it works out.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

It might be too late for that, after you've hammered it with a possible physical issue.

Using a car analogy, lets say you have an engine oil leak in your car but you choose not to get it fixed (probably a pretty cheap fox right now) but carry on using it in the hope that it will get better itself. You then run it into the ground until it runs out of oil entirely and the engine seizes totally.

See how you've turned a $150 fix into a $3000 nightmare??

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

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Guys,

I have successfully pulled off everything I wanted to from the bad drive to a new drive. I will use the recovery studio at work to just scan and fix any errors on the files on the new disk.

BootMedPlus (ddrescue/ubuntu) somehow managed to help me copy drag and drop files from the bad to the new drive! HDDRAWcopy was awesome, but at the rate it was spitting errors I could have ended up at the other end with read errors!

Thanks everyone for your help and now I can relax that the memories are restored

S

Given your drive's symptoms description, not sure how you pulled that off just like that, but hey, kudos and congrats!

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

@no_real_idea,

Although I wish you all good luck in your recovery, I don't see how both parts of your latest comment can be correct:


I don't see how you know that you have successfully pulled everything you want from the "bad drive", because you then say:


Until you have done that process, what makes you think that software can "fix any errors on the files on the new disk"? We have seen a few examples here recently, where people assumed they had a successful recovery, only to find out later (in some cases, too late to allow any further recovery work) that their "successful recovery" wasn't.

The point is that until you have definitely confirmed that the files you need are fully intact, correct and not corrupted in any way (and are preferably backed-up onto new media), then you should not think of it as a "successful" recovery. Don't assume that the "recovery studio at work" (I guess you mean R-Studio software?) can "fix any errors" (to quote your phrase). Some types of errors are simply not fixable by such software.

I hope you don't need this warning and that you have been as successful as the first part of your message suggests. However the assumptions implied in the second part of your message, make me worried that you have not yet reached the point where success is confirmed. Good luck!

Dear Vulcan, I see the wisdom, knowledge and experience in what you are saying - where as i am just a novice happy that I was able to find the bad drive on DDrescue, open the drive, find the folders, open the folders, and then was allowed to drag and drop in to a brand new drive.

After the drag and drag finished through for 3 hours or so, the new drive was 47gb, and had 13,181 files. As soon as I saw that the new drive was populated and had files on it, I replied on the forum to say that "I was able to pull the files of the bad drive successfully". Up until last night, it was next to impossible to peek in to the drive.

This morning, prior to getting to work, I used "recuva" and connected the "new drive" and used the sofware to recover some folders. I saw at least 400 photos, video's, word documents - come back intact and were just fine and opened properly. I did that with a couple of folders and did have success. There were 3 photos that were recovered but I could see the damage on them.

And since the help desk at work has better recovery software (not sure what they use), i brought the drive to work, so that they can help me. At this point, any photos, videos, documents and stuff that can be salvaged successfully is a "win" for me. My work for last 100 hours or so, would be paid off with anything i can get off the drive.

I will update you Vulcan on how the recovery went and how many files I was able to fully recover and how many got damaged.

Lastly, while browsing through the folders yesterday on the bad drive (using BOOTMEDPLUS/ddrescue), before copying, i noticed that a folder which had photos would appeared empty...but when I copied to the new folder on a new drive, it would take 2hrs. And the new drive, would show a data increment of 12GB!

so hoping that i can pull at least half of those 14000 files or so to safety!

S

Vulcan, labtech -

Except for one folder that has lot of my kids favorite movies (and other stuff), I have been able to recover everything. So, statistically I would say, I got about 75% out of the drive (up to 100gb).

Here's what I found as a synopsis -
1. Drive has some sort of hardware issue which is intermittent
2. Bad blocks and bad sectors at the beginning, making the access to the drive impossible
3. NTFS, and FAT table were messed up and that caused folders to show up empty (0 bytes). However, when I fixed the NTFS using ntfsfix and fsck (using ubuntu console)...files/sub folders appeared back in the folders, letting me copy more data out compared to the first run
4. Had to reduce the size of the partition to the extent possible, which gave some additional time to pull the data off

I guess it was beginners luck that I was able to pull the data off while the hardware issues persisted. To this day, the drive remains inaccessible and doesnt let me format or repair

Thanks again!

You have no idea how lucky.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts