This week I was trying to recover data for a client. The Hard disk would immediately crash any software that tried to access it, including windows explorer or any recovery software. This included live CDs that were based on windows.

The solution I used was to use Trinity CPR suite (a linux live CD). I suspect a regular linux live CD would have worked as well. With that I was able to copy over the files without using any recovery software at all (Midnight commander).

My question: What type of damage exactly causes this behavior, and is there a way around it in windows? W.D.'s utility reported Code 0007, general read error. I did not attempt a long Test for fear of damaging the drive. Secondary question: can WD's diagnostic tool fix issues like this with the full scan option? Does it analyze the filesystem itself or the raw sectors only?

Drive has bad sectors and/or weak head/s.




Not advised to mount or run recovery on disks with errors.

Always clone the faulty disk(using gnu_ddrescue/ MTP) to another working disk and recover from that disk.