I have a Toshiba MK4025GAS laptop drive that is failing. I left it in the freezer overnight and then ran SpinRite while hitting it with a hammer and for some reason I still can't recover the data.....

....OK I am kidding. I am definately a newbie, but I have read enough here to know your pet peeves.

The drive would not boot. I put it in a an external USB enclosure to see if maybe it was just Windows corruption. The drive was not making any clicking noise or other sounds. In the USB enclosure, it was recognized by Windows, but the file structure loaded very slowly (i.e. took 2-3 min to mount the drive in My Computer with a drive letter, then when I click on each folder to open, took 2-3 min to show me the directory structure of the folder.) I got all kinds of CRC errors when I tried to copy files off of it.

Next I booted with RecoverSoft Media Tools Pro 5.1 and tried to do a reverse clone. It went up to 7% fairly quickly and has been stuck there for over 24 hours. It seems to still be imaging sectors, but says "Time Remaining: 324 hours 29 minutes" and "Errors: 20". That seems like a lost cause. If it helps at all, it has been on the same cylinder (4515) the whole time.

I am not familiar with MHDD, or if that would even help with anything. I know I will probably get the standard "newb" advice of "take it to a pro". However, this is really more of a learning experience. If I don't recover data, it's no big deal. I would like to learn a bit more about the process of diagnosing a drive. If someone here could offer some advice or point me in the right direction, I would appreciate the help.

In return, I promise not to freeze any drives or hit them with hammers.

Thanks in advance.

_________________
http://www.ancilesecurity.com

AEG,Whirlpool or BOSH probably will help ;o)

Try windows again with YCOPY (google it) and see if you can get back your files (select important files first!).

Leaving your drive running like you have will almost certainly cause more damage and has probably killed your chances of recovery.

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.

OK before trying to mount in Windows again, I booted with MHDD. I ran the off-line SMART tests and they were successful. I am running a scan (all the destructive options turned off), and it is showing many blocks over 500ms and a handful with errors.

Where would I go from here? I will try guru's suggestion, but I thought mounting in Windows (with all the writes to the drive) would be more destructive.

_________________
http://www.ancilesecurity.com

As you said "If I don't recover data, it's no big deal. I would like to learn a bit more about the process of diagnosing a drive."

If it's serious and you don't want anymore damage it would be better to (intelligent)clone or have a write blocker on your HDD port to stop windows being naughty :O)

You can also try mounting in Linux. Nice little tut here :- http://port25.technet.com/videos/resear ... covery.pdf

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.

Good idea with the write blocker.....you can block USB writes in the registry can't you?

What do you mean by "intelligent clone"? Is there software that does this? Or do you mean a tool like Deepspar Imager?

_________________
http://www.ancilesecurity.com

Indeed, I have seen many toshiba drives with very weak/failing heads and magnetic domain degradation


You will need an imager that has good bad/weak sector handling. It needs to be smart enough to move on to the next/skip many sectors when an error or a specified timeout is hit.

Preferrably you want a multi-pass imager that will make multiple attempts at the sectors it was not able to get on the last attempt, but it will remember what sectors it has already gotten so it will try not to overwork the drive/waste time.


unfortunately I do not know of any commercially available software that can do this, the only equipment that can do this are the special data recovery hard/software complex such as Deepspar, Atola, DE, and DC. DE and DC work alittlebit differently then an imager, but get the job done in many cases (So I have heard, I do not own either so I do not make any claims)


Regards,

vrocco,

From an old post of yours I guess your not a newbie.:-

Got a drive in for recovery today. It's not recognized in bios at all. Worse yet, the customer at some point removed the entire label from the front of the drive. I have no model number, serial number, firmware revision, or anything.

Is there any way to indentify this drive so I can get a matching donor drive? Like i said, not recognized by bios or software solutions and I don't have a PC3000.

Any suggestions?


Read some more.............................

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.

I really am a newbie. Trying to learn, unfortunately that doesn't seem to be smiled upon here.

I am a network/pc tech. From time to time I have to deal with a bad drive. I have no wish to make my money in data recovery, but when a drive isn't that bad (often just not bootable) it is nice to recover files for a client.

_________________
http://www.ancilesecurity.com

Toshiba are not the best drives to start with : undocumented (for normal people) and barely supported even from multi-thousand $ diagnostics.
Nevertheless, it is possible to work with them and repair to access data.
If you cannot easily access data, it's time for a pro to get the stuff out of this drive.

We see these drives often and they almost always have motor speed / bearing issues.

We swap platters and heads for this problem, which we don't recommend that you try to do.

If it is a bearing issue, you'll find changing the position of the drive may change the results of copying off data. Try straight vertical, for example.

_________________
http://www.datasaversllc.com

If it's not mechanical, it's SA. Then it's game over for "average joe".

You could try dd_rescue, as this can keep a log of what sectors its cloned and which it hasn't.

You will need a rudimentary Linux knowledge for this though.

I agree with jono though, nearly all these MK4025 drives have had bearing issues. I've got a shelf full of these beauties!

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

I think I will partially diagree. Most of the Mk4025 have failing or weak heads. I would say the MK**18GAS have more bearing issues.

How would you accurately diagnose whether the issue was heads or bearings?

Also, is there a bootdisk distro that includes dd_rescue or do I have to compile my own knoppix distro with it?

_________________
http://www.ancilesecurity.com

eyes and ears with a nice bit of experience.

Another vote here for lots of MKx025GAS with bad motor/bearing

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.