Seagate 7200.11 ST3750330AS "I'm not quite dead yet!"

[smportis]

@smportis,
...
Regarding the not-quite-dead drive which still reports 750GB, the ddrescue commands in your latest comment are wrong. The ddrescue infile and outfile parameters should be /dev[/something] devices (you must be sure that you use the correct device names - this is vital!), and not /media[/something] mounted filesystems.
...

Sigh - got it. Lesson learned on mount points. Trying again.

@Einstein -

Scott

[smportis]

@smportis,

This attempt may still be unsuccessful, as there is a specific failure mode of recent Seagate drives (esp 7200.11 & .12) - we won't know unless you try ddrescue (correctly). However I have not yet seen a successful DIY recovery of a drive with that behaviour. On the other hand, drives with that behaviour have been recovered using a hardware imager (specifically Deepspar), which could be done at a suitable DR company. IMHO, for a DIY result, all you can hope for is that the drive has not yet deteriorated to that level.

Thanks Vulcan. I made sure I was saying "/dev/sda" instead of "/media/sda". In the actual command line, I was doing it correctly (through luck - didn't understand the difference), and only typed "/media/sda" in the forum posting.

Regardless, trying it again to be sure, and it copies zero sectors.

I did accidentally copy the thumb drive to the target drive. That was cute. Couldn't figure out why when I booted from the CD, I had two "Lexar" drives listed. "WTF?" I said. That one took me a while to figure out (yes, the 16GB drive was the thumb drive, not the bad drive that is clicking).

Ok, ok, I get it. I see why you guys are well paid to fix harddrives.

[Vulcan]

Thanks for clearing-up that the drescue commands in your comment using /media were typos, and valid commands were actually typed (though since I don't know in which order your system recognised / enumerated the source & destination drives, I can't say that the command was actually correct or not.... ) and for explaining what that 16GB drive was (i.e. it wasn't the clicking drive).

In my experience using ddrescue with various drives, copying zero sectors is unusual, though not impossible, for a drive which reports correctly in the BIOS. You might have reached the end of a DIY recovery attempt, if the drive really is that sick, or there may be some other problem, which would require interpretation of the relevant Linux error messages when running ddrescue, to try to identify.

[smportis]

Thanks for clearing-up that the drescue commands in your comment using /media were typos, and valid commands were actually typed (though since I don't know in which order your system recognised / enumerated the source & destination drives, I can't say that the command was actually correct or not.... ) and for explaining what that 16GB drive was (i.e. it wasn't the clicking drive).

In my experience using ddrescue with various drives, copying zero sectors is unusual, though not impossible, for a drive which reports correctly in the BIOS. You might have reached the end of a DIY recovery attempt, if the drive really is that sick, or there may be some other problem, which would require interpretation of the relevant Linux error messages when running ddrescue, to try to identify.

Thx Vulcan et al. At this point, I'm going to give the self help session a rest. ddrescue seems to be a bust on this particular set of drives .

[BlackST]

Ddrescue CAN work but there is a lot more work to do and test BEFORE cloning. This is the difficult part...

[mr_spokk]

If you not familiar with Linux don't use it, I said it before and say it again use Media Tools Pro...before you wreck your drive.

Cheers