Hard Drive Crash (No clicking or abnormal sounds)

[pawn3d]

I have a hard drive that crashed in a Toshiba Satellite and I'm trying to determine the problem and how to fix it.

I'm 90% sure it's not mechanical. When plugged via USB external enclosure the disk fires up and does the normal "buzzzz" and the drive letters will show in My Computer. However, when I double-click the drive letter, it locks up the computer and I get the hour glass. It does that for about 5 minutes before telling me the drive is inaccessible.

So I took the drive to my faithful Macbook and plugged it in USB. The drive did not show up on the Desktop, nor was it listed in Disk Utility. However, a nifty little program I have called Data Rescue II. I opened that and after 4 minutes, it recognized the drive. (about 5x longer than normal). The quick scan found nothing so I'm doing the thorough scan and it says 52 hours remaining!

1. What could possibly be wrong with this drive?
2. How do I fix it?

[harddrivespecialist]

I would say you have physical damage to your drive, most likely sctrach or head failure.

[lcoughey]

If the data has low value, continue on and you might get lucky...but expect the entire process take a few days with Data Rescue II. If the data has value ($300 or more), take it to a data recovery professional right away, prior to a complete head crash and unrecoverable loss of your data.

[thatdellguy]

Motor is not spinning as fast as it should causing delays or possible bad sectors????....Give it the 52 hours and you should have your answer as it seizes.

[CK]

Data Rescue II won't see the NTFS partition, so you're wasting your time with this approach.

What is the model of the drive??

[lcoughey]

Data Rescue II won't see the NTFS partition, so you're wasting your time with this approach.

What is the model of the drive??

Good observation...I didn't catch that part in his message. Yup, definitely wasting his time there.

[pawn3d]

Data Rescue II won't see the NTFS partition, so you're wasting your time with this approach.

What is the model of the drive??

Fujitsu MHY2250BH

[CK]

Likely a weak/failing head in the drive and/or large number of bad sectors.

You could try imaging the drive with something like media tools pro, but if the data is important - seek the assistance of a pro who has the right equipment and skills. If a head is failing, you may render the drive unrecoverable with further DIY efforts. Hammering the drive with software is likely to exacerbate the problem.

[pawn3d]

Likely a weak/failing head in the drive and/or large number of bad sectors.

You could try imaging the drive with something like media tools pro, but if the data is important - seek the assistance of a pro who has the right equipment and skills. If a head is failing, you may render the drive unrecoverable with further DIY efforts. Hammering the drive with software is likely to exacerbate the problem.

Do you have a link to download media tools? I couldn't find it.

[thatdellguy]

http://download.cnet.com/RecoverSoft-Me ... 74129.html

If your company has a 96% data recovery success rate then why are you asking for such basic software?

Data recovery doesn't have to cost you thousands of dollars. At French Quarter Computer Services, data loss is only temporary and we prove it every day, boasting a 96% success rate. Our specialists use various procedures in recovering lost files, giving the consumer an alternative to $5,000 data recovery houses. We can recover data, even after they have been purposely deleted.

[thatdellguy]

I found my answer:

http://local.yahoo.com/info-43836304-ne ... ew-orleans

[poehere]

Wow got three of these in here the last couple of weeks. Each one of them has a weak head and a lot of media damage. Two of them were broght to me straight form the freezer all nicely wraped up and frozen asking me to get data off of them. One came normal here with out freezer burn on it. Good luck.

[CK]

I'm particularly disturbed by the photo....

http://neworleanscomputerrepair.com/new ... overy.html

Love this gem of advice too...

"Do not attempt to remove your hard drive and repair it yourself. Handling a hard drive incorrectly will further damage it."

Such a shame people don't actually follow this advice!!

[hddguy]

Surely this job should have been cloned before attempting a 52 hour scan with HFS recovery software on an NTFS volume?? your website say:

At French Quarter Computer Services, data loss is only temporary and we prove it every day, boasting a 96% success rate.

.

I do not think you can achieve a 96% success rate based on your requests and posts here. Maybe an affiliation with a larger DR firm would suit you better?

[DRNJ]

10% of the drives I get in have scratches so bad that I do not think a team of scientist can recover it.
I do not think any data recovery company can do better than 90%.
I will send you this one if you want to have a go at it:

[pepe]

I also have >96%, but I must admit that the rate of such badly damaged drives is much lower than 10%.

pepe

[pawn3d]

Well, I opened the drive and sprayed some compressed air on the heads, closed it, plugged it in and it fired up!
I got all the data, but I'm not trusting the drive for shit!

[pawn3d]

10% of the drives I get in have scratches so bad that I do not think a team of scientist can recover it.
I do not think any data recovery company can do better than 90%.

You too can have a higher success rate. It's quite easy, actually, but you need to adjust your business model. For instance, I don't take clicking drives, or those that make any weird sounds for that matter and send them off to my buddies at Drive Savers, where they can save their Data and their wallet with this 10% Discount Code: DS20847!!!

[pepe]

I must tell we accept drives with all kinds of problems and never send the customer to other places...
On the contrary, we recovered several cases a large and branded local company doomed to 0% chance.

[pawn3d]

Well that's the price you pay.
Me? I'm afraid that if I invest in cleanroom, it won't serve it's purpose when SSD are the standard.