Recover data from dead SEAGATE barracuda LP hdd

[leletto]

Hi,

my seagate barracuda lp 2tb is dead, without any kind of messages from acronis drive monitor. I shutted down my "server" and at the reboot it start clicking a little bit. Shutted down another time and then I can't access any part of the disk, it show the directory structures but as soon as I start copying files to another disk my machine freeze.

So i've tried ddrescue ( from hiren's linux ) but without luck...

ddrescue start imaging the drive and then it stops at about 2gb of data.No way to read anything from this point.

Have someone some suggestions? Already tried some guide from ddrescue website but no luck...

[dmarques]

Your drive may be failing, or can have already one of the heads damaged and that could justify why you can read until a point.

What I would suggest is if your data is important, you should stop working with it, or else you could collapse it totally.
Try to seek help of a pro while in this phase to avoid extra costs.

[Vulcan]

@leletto,

As dmarques says, there are always risks with DIY, so you need to decide whether the data is worth enough to pay for professional recovery attempts.

FYI you cannot always expect warning about disk failure, from monitoring s/w - most disk failures give no warning; only a minority produce a SMART warning.

Unfortunately you don't mention exactly what ddrescue options you have tried, and what the exact results were for each one. There just isn't enough detail in your description for me to get a good picture of exactly what is happening (e.g. Linux messages), and info on what you do to recover after each attempt. As I explained to another member in a recent thread, my experience with ddrescue is that difficult cases can require specific commands for that situation (i.e. there is no generic approach which is suitable for all drives). Also, some problems are just beyond what ddrescue can recover.

If you decide to continue with DIY, 2 approaches you could try as the next stage, based on the limited information in your post, would include reverse cloning, and/or forwards cloning but starting a long way into the drive (e.g. 1TB) (obvously assuming you're using a ddrescue log file). However, without having the drive in front of me to get more details, those suggestions might be a waste of time, unfortunately, and as I said, the drive could deteriorate (making professional recovery more costly or impossible) if you continue DIY attempts.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[irs]

hi,
i totally agree with Dmarques and Vulcan be very careful with DIY as you can finally kill your drive and make data recovery harder or even impossible.
If you need data recovery me and BlackST are both in your country.
Bye
Luca

[laptokowiec]

If you can manage to make the clone, you can save some money.
Download DMDE or HdClone and make the copy.

[BlackST]

IF he can manage. You said it.

If it is a head problem it will hang when the culprit is switched (happens at a regular interval).
The more you play, the more the problem - until the drive hangs completely.
DDrescue was already used and it hanged. I would try to understand if it is head problem or maybe firmware (can be too), but it is advisable to backup the complete firmware- a thing that is impossible without tooling.
Hope it is a minor problem, but having seen a lot of these puppies, it's a thing I have already seen many times.

[leletto]

The data on this disk isn't important, it's only annoying redownloading files, some rare emulator roms, etc.. Anyway I'm trying to find some solutions to recover my customer's broken drives...baby steps.

Never tried the REVERSE reading solution.

How can I achieve that?


p.s.: I'm really sorry for my poor English. I understand it better than writing.

[BlackST]

Anyway I'm trying to find some solutions to recover my customer's broken drives...baby steps.

Che succede se sbagli o fai danno su dischi dei "tuoi clienti" ? Se proprio lo vuoi fare almeno accertati di avere gli strumenti e le competenze, altrimenti possono essere guai seri. Giusto un consiglio....
Circa il tuo disco, ti devi fare un po' di prove con quello che trovi in giro se non hai tool commerciali a pagamento, fai riferimento a chi li ha fatti. Secondo me, dai sintomi, se ne viene fuori giusto con gli strumenti HW che usiamo di solito, altrimenti devi perderci del tempo, forse funziona forse no e magari il disco ti muore anche tra le mani, ma come hai detto tu non ha dati importanti.

What happens if you do something wrong or damage "your customers" drives ? If you really want to do it, be sure to have the tools and skills , or you can be in deep troubles. Only an advice....
About your HDD, you have to try with free stuff if you don't have access to commercial paid tools, referring to their makers. To me,according to the symptoms, it can be easily cloned with the HW tools we use, otherwise you have to invest time and effort on your own , maybe (or maybe not) it will work or the disk can also die in your hands,but as you said data is not important.

[Vulcan]

@leletto:

Anyway I'm trying to find some solutions to recover my customer's broken drives...baby steps.

As I think BlackST is also saying, IMHO you have to be cautious about taking risks with your customer's data.

For example, DIY recovery attempts, when it's your own data, you know it's (minimal) value, you've decided not to use a DR company, and you've accepted the risk that you might make things worse during DIY - that's one situation. Offering recoveries to customers is a different situation IMHO.

Never tried the REVERSE reading solution.

How can I achieve that?

Read the ddrescue manual for the latest version. I don't know which version of ddrescue is included in the Linux version you're using - it might be so old that it doesn't include the reverse cloning option (-R) as that was introduced only in the latest stable release of ddrescue (1.14 - Jan 2011).

p.s.: I'm really sorry for my poor English. I understand it better than writing.

Your English is good. To my shame, I speak to my Italian friends in English, as their English is also much, much better than my Italian.

[leletto]

Yes, you are all right. That's why I'm doing tests using my personal disks.

Sometimes my customers asks me if I can do something with his own disk, because they don't want ( and they don't need too ), to pay hundreds of euro to recover data, because is less expansive for him to restarting work from the beginning. So DIY solutions are the only way. I can't buy professional tools because I'm not a recovery professional and recovering data is only a service that I do "if I can", without any warranty,and is cheap...

I'm only trying to find the best DIY way to do it.

For the same reason I don't accept disks with important data, and I point my customers to the right professionals services.