1st Proper HDD Recovery Attempt

[griffinballs]

Hi all, I'm new here. Nice to meet you all. Hoping for a little help and direction if possible and if I can along the ways, help out.

I'm a desktop engineer by trade and have had quite an interest in data recovery for a while but not really got started too much, but I'm quite clued up to the basic theory like drive boards having ROM/flash chips etc so they can't just be swapped straight off. Basic like, but I'm not a total novice. Plus as I said, desktop engineer, plenty of hardware repair experience, also quite into electronic repair, got a basic working knowledge and can use a soldering iron etc...

Anyway, enough intro, onto the problem. In my day to day I send off quite a few HDD's for data recovery and have a good external company to use, but of course, recovery is expensive. For company critical stuff, its a no brainer. But all the time I get users ask me about their personal HDD's and machines at home.
Today I got a guy give me a drive that's dead asking if I could do anything with it as he does want the photos on there, but typical data recovery fees are just way too far out of his price range. I'd like to help out if possible as he's quite a good friend.
I've recovered plenty of times where just drive can't be seen in windows, but using getdataback or similar software I have been successful. But this today is a straight forward dropping incident. His son dropped his laptop, drive dead.

The drive currently spins up. Windows recognises it as far as it shows up in device manager and gives me the eject prompt in the systray. But nothing appears in disk management. And in turn obviously no drives display in Explorer. HDD Guru doesn't see it.

As it was dropped and I can hear it spin but can't hear the heads flicking, I'm guessing a head stack replacement may repair it? Thats my most basic diagnosis, heads are knackered due to the drop. In which case, replace em, jobs a good un? I hope anyway...

If this is not necessarily the case, what else could we be talking? I've checked out the board and everything looks ok, all components looking present and correct, no burn marks anywhere or anything or leaky caps. I forgot to ask but at this stage I assumed the machine to be off when it was dropped.

Drive details: -
Samsung
Model: HM250HI
HDD P/N: HM250HI/D
LBA: 488,397,168
250.0GB
REV. A
F/W: 2AC101C4
SEC-HM250HI(B)
Manufactured: 2009.12

I've watched loads of head stack replacement vids and know all about keeping them apart etc... I'm quite confident I could do the procedure, I take apart laptops every day, and take apart cars for fun, lol so not scared of repairing things. Well aware that without a clean room I'm not gonna be doing it the safest way.
Only concern I have on the replacement, is, are these drives like WD drives where you have to align the heads and its virtually impossible or have I got a nice easy drive to swap heads on.

Also I found a drive on ebay that was identical in every way to above and manufactured 2009.11 so was thinking that would be a good shout for donor.

I've turned away many people/friends before and they literally just bin the drive and take the loss. I've personally done it myself too. Dropped a drive and wrote it off cause couldn't afford the recovery but miss all my family pictures now. I'd love to be able to do at least something even if its not a 100% recovery with these situations as they arise so often in my job.

Thanks for any and all advice/help given. I really appreciate the time taken to read and respond and pass on knowledge.

Griff

[pcn]

Hi Griff,

if the data is important, don't even think about trying to open that drive without proper equipment. There are videos showing headswaps and there are videos showing how to free stuck heads (or better how not to ...). There are so many lost cases coming in from ppl that just watched youtube tutorials:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11912
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=31150

I just had a client that opened the drive of his gf, a lamp dropped on top of the drive. It does not turn any more. He opened it somewhere, turned the platter by hand, and checked all the screws to be tight. He even powered on the drive open. Platter-Alignment lost, platters damaged, heads dead => Lost case.

You need experience to do physical work, you need the equipment to do it safe. And after you have done a headswap you might be faced with the next problems: how about damaged firmware, bad sectors in SA, overall bad condition. How will you deal with these problems?

When the drive was dropped heads might be damaged, there might be platter scratches and so on. There is nothing you should do with the drive, even power on that drive is a risk on dropped drives, one should check heads first in a lab.

For the donor: What was identical? PN, Firmware, Serial-Number, Preamp?

Best regards,

[drHDD]

First of all you need connect drive to terminal. Probably drive can tell you about his problem. Second of all - if drive doesn't click, why you think heads should be changed?

[griffinballs]

Thanks for the responses guys.
Why I thought it would be the heads was simply. The thing was dropped so suffered shock, there is no physical damage to the circuitry and the drive still spins up.
Being there are only two moving parts in the drive and one of them is still moving, I assumed the heads would be a logical cause.

Also I did forget to mention, earlier today I got the drive booted on my work pc and it showed up the drive partitions. It started acting funny when I tried to enter the main drive so I just shut the drive down.

At home tonight it's acted how I mentioned before. So again, I saw this as mechanical failure that's progressing I.e. A torn off head.

I'm gonna speak to the guy tomorrow and see if he is giving it to me as the last hope. I'll of course inform him of the reputable data recovery company I use before I start playing hard drive doctor. But I'm sure he will not be willing to put that high a value on the data. But he may be willing to buy a donor drive. I wouldn't want anything, for me is the curiosity. If it's doable and we've nothing to lose, then why not

[drHDD]

It's look like you don't have enough knowledge to do recovery. If drive doesn't click, so heads are alive so far, but something prevents drive to show data like broken system modules or something else. For sure there is media damage. For me it's look like you are going to kill drive instead of recovery data. I could try to repair data from this drive for $300 (all fees in, except shipping). May be I could do it cheaper (I need have drive in hands before I can tell exactly), but it will not gonna happen if you will continue.
Anyway - good luck!

[pcimage]

I don't think the heads are broken to be honest, so at this stage it shouldn't be "too" expensive.

But it DOES need proper hardware tools to minimise the risk of catastrophic failure.

Happy to take a look if you wanna send it up to me

[MindMergepk]

I don't think the heads are broken to be honest, so at this stage it shouldn't be "too" expensive.

+1,
as per description both controller and heads seems to be fine.
safe approach would be to start imaging the drive if you can.

of course pcimage is highly recommended.

good luck.

[pcn]

Windows recognises it as far as it shows up in device manager and gives me the eject prompt in the systray. But nothing appears in disk management. And in turn obviously no drives display in Explorer.

I suspect you used a USB-Adapter to connect the drive, have you tried it with sata also and if so was it detected in disk management? If drive is not detected in disk management, you can not image it.

As other members told you if heads are not in a too bad condition it should not be that expensive.

[fzabkar]

Can you obtain a terminal log from the drive's serial port?

How to connect a terminal cable on a Samsung drive:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... =189&p=432

[griffinballs]

Thanks for the help guys.
I didn't manage to see the guy today so can't take this any further yet as you all keep saying, the more I plug it in, the more damage I could cause at this stage.

Please stop advertising your services though, that's not why I'm here. I use a reputable company for recoveries that are truly necessary. This is purely a learning exercise. Any of the recoveries that I ever attempt are going to be as last port of call when the drive is otherwise going in the bin. The person would not even approach me if the data was that valuable to them, they can't afford hundreds, it's merely a favour if and that's a big if I can ever do anything about it.

Saying things like you don't have the knowledge really don't help, that's exactly the point of my post, to hopefully gain the knowledge so I can potentially fix it. If I can't, I can't, no big deal. But Id simply like to try hence seeking the advice.

Thanks for all the constructive help so far. I now have more knowledge of the subject already thanks to your posts, I was wrong to think the heads clearly and I have some things here that I can now try looking at once I confirm the guy is willing and offer him the services of true professionals.

Speaking of which. Nobody was born a data recovery expert, you all learned somewhere at some point. Please don't hate on me for wanting to learn. Granted that's what schools are for but I'm not exactly going to sign up for a data recovery course when I'm not even sure if it's an avenue I'd like to pursue long term. Rather dip my toes in the water and see if it's to my liking first

[pcimage]

If it's a "last port of call" as you say, and the client accepts the risks...

What you could try is ddrescue (on hirens boot CD I believe) and use that to clone the drive to a good one, then use some recovery software (eg rstudio, GetDataBack or reclaime etc...) on the clone. That would be the safest way without using "proper" tools.

But please monitor the progress for a while and listen carefully for any untoward noises, as it may be that one of the heads is damaged. Also if the drive really starts to struggle then stop it.

The reason people on here are trying to deter "DIY" attempts on drives that aren't the property of the original poster, is that so often we hear that people (end users) say they accept the risks of a cheap "DIY" fix and then when that fails they suddenly realise the importance of the data and only then enlist the help of a pro, and then often it's too late, the drive is deceased! So please double and triple check with the client that they fully accept that your attempts may kill the drive, through no fault of your own, and make it unrecoverable by anybody.

Hope it helps, and best of luck!!

[dick]

Also I did forget to mention, earlier today I got the drive booted on my work pc and it showed up the drive partitions. It started acting funny when I tried to enter the main drive so I just shut the drive down.

So as would be expected there is media damage at least.

If the data is not important and it is a do or die scenario I would suggest you get yourself set up with a pc system unit and then connect the drive directly to the sata port and work from there. Consider cloning the drive though there may be other options. It would be good to know where the bad sectors might be located before cloning.

[day1data]

If it's a "last port of call" as you say, and the client accepts the risks...

What you could try is ddrescue (on hirens boot CD I believe) and use that to clone the drive to a good one, then use some recovery software (eg rstudio, GetDataBack or reclaime etc...) on the clone. That would be the safest way without using "proper" tools.

Do what Pcimage says. Unless you want to invest in expensive tools or turn data recovery into a profession use ddrescue to image the data to a good drive. Never try and access the failing drive in Windows etc, it will just make things worse.
I can never stress enough to people ALWAYS work with a image of the drive never the failing drive itself.

Please don't take it personal if we are telling you to stop attempting recovery on the drive and send it to a pro because you don't know what your doing. It's only because data recovery experts like us see drives come to us that are no longer recoverable from DIY jobs. Most of the time DIY's are the same, the drive was opened outside of clean room because it was assumed that the drive had a mechanical issue. DIY's end up bad because the failure is at the beginning "The Diagnosis".

Just for an example, why would you try a headswap when the problem is actually a firmware issue. Your just making matters worse by trying to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place. This is why we need the terminal output of the drive. Drives always say a lot from a terminal output and helps a lot to diagnose the drive.

I think we are more saying you should practice on other drives with unimportant data first before attempting a recovery that has important data.

[HDD Spaz]

What makes you think it will be £100's. If it requires just a hardware image and data extraction he might be looking at around £100.

If you want a learning exercise buy some old disks off ebay, don't try to learn with someone else's data.

Learn first then try to recover.

Also there are no School's for data recovery, everything is more of less self taught at personal expense and time, so don't hate on people not wanting to share knowledge.