I have a 250GB Seagate mobile that comes up Disk i/o error (NTFS). It's recognized in the BIOS but will not mount successfully in Windows. Imaging in reverse gets to 39% flawlessly and then hangs. A standard image with Media Tools Pro seems to skip every sector with a read error. My question is two-fold. Would trying different starting points on the LBA be a good idea? I assume there are chunks of bad sectors all over drive. Keep in mind this drive just worked flawlessly 3 days ago during a virus scan for a client. The 2nd question is would deepspar be able to clone this type of drive or would I still be running into the same problems? I'm trying to convince myself to purchase one

Accurate diagnostics has to be done in order to determine exact problem, then you have to eliminate that problem. Otherwise you will be guessing...

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www.datarecoveryne.com

Well, if you are trying to convince yourself to purchase one, I just saw a message on the Scott Moulton's data recovery list where a guy is selling one for $2,400.. Don't know if re-posting that is allowed so, if you are interested just PM me if you aren't a member there too.

What tool are you using currently to do the reverse image?

If anything would be able to image the drive, the DeepSpar imager is the tool.

I don't recommend buying a used DeepSpar imager...their technical support is worth paying the full price. I'm assuming that their support would transfer with the used system.

Perhaps there is someone in your area who has the imager who is willing to show you what it can do.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Where is this list you speak? I'm quite familiar with Scott's lectures / videos. HD Dudplicator and now Media Tools Pro. Both do reverse imaging. Running a scan with MHDD now. Seems to be a LOT of scattered bad sectors on the drive. However MHDD is at least reading "good" parts of the drive going forward. Any software imaging I put this thing through just reads every sector as bad and skips it. Reverse imaging has only yielded ~38% of good data but thats not enough to build an accurate file list.

As an update, I switched the SATA controller to IDE mode and now it will at least start to see some good parts of the drive going forward. Weird how reverse imagine worked fine up to a point but changing to IDE mode allowed it to have more reliability going forward.

Hi, You could also try imaging the first 128gb's in a forward direction using the free copyr.dma application. It works well when there are many bad sectors but unfortunately no log to refer to after!
As you have 39% in reverse and hopefully about 50% using copyr.dma whilst mounting the drive through a sata to ide adaptor, then you could try to clone the remainder with Media tools. I know its a bit of messing around but if it works then it's a good job done.

Excellent advice. Thanks. In cases like this where the imaging is painfully slow, does DeepSpar do it much faster? I realize stopping / starting with each bad sector adds up over time but holy cow trying to image a 250GB with thousands of bad sectors is going to take forever via software.

Well ,
Lets Assume You Have 0 ~ 100 Sectors In a Drive .this Is How I Would Clone your Case ,Break The Drive Into 4 Parts

1 : 0 ~ 25
2 : 25 ~ 50
3 : 50 ~ 75
4 : 75 ~ 100

Then you Could Use CopyR,Mediatools etc To Clone Each Section Forward And Reverse ,also Make Sure That you Access Device Using direct Interface Not Int 13h Ebios Interface .Understand

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Completely. Thanks Amarbir.

I have no problems with anything we do over there being shared or reposted here. I did everything to make it so people could share info with anyone and be as open as possible. That is what I want people to do. We arent in competition, we can all work together, the world is a big place and lots of people need help and information. Share it, please do.

Hey Scott, hows it going, (love the Course by the way i'm on day 3 any ways). i had an issue with a seagate 500gb drive, same thing i get i/o errors trying to mount on a windows machine. what i did was ... i got a target 1 terabyte, HPA'ed it to matching LBA of my source drive... then used Medatools to image peices of it, ... things i learned in the 3 week process.. i could get sectors & when Medaitools would time out, i would write down the last lba i was on, then shutdown the PC & start again. Grab more sectors & restart again... 3 weeks of that, i had grabbed about 70% of the drive,...I grabbed as much of the MFT sectors i could & then i would do the Quick scan in Get Data Back for NTFS from run time software,... i used it to find the LBA area the Target Folder was. & go back to grab the sectors for that area, & slowly recovered the wanted data, then once i saw i was on the right track, i got the seagate USB cable & used a Laptop to do soft resets every time i would stop reading ... things i learned with Meda tools, don't tell it to skip sectors automatically you will zero out sectors you had already had. also set your Time out Read in CTRL S for mediatools to 600000 (max time out read) & set your P setting to around 25. that was my stable reading options,... once i got the data i wanted i'm gonna try to turn off reallocation ( i had checked the Smart Relocation info) & try to finish the image, i need about 80 million lbas to complete the 500,...... be sure to use a write blocker while on Get Data Back that way. you don't alter the sectors that had already been transferred.