Hello.
Sorry for this being my first post but I need some help.
My main drive, the one in the subject, is failing.
I run hdtune Error scan to check what happened and I found several bad sectors (if you need it, I'd post a screenshot, later).
Unluckily it happened just a bit before I decided to backup data (for a big new format&reinstall).
Even tho the drive can still boot to windows, many files are now corrupted due to the bad sectors, so it happens to some apps like outlook that keeps crashing.
What I want to do is at least backup everything then try to repair, or at least recover as much as it's possible, or at least some directories important to me.
Some more info on the drive:
Maxtor DiamondMax 10
Model: 6L160P0
160GB PATA133 HDD

Code: BAJ41G20
K, M, G, A

TLA: 6L160P0131L01 AAB

LBA: 320173056
ER: C 300
+5V 740 mA
+12V 1500 mA
Mfg.Date:04FEB2006

So it seems that it has BAJ41G20 firmware onboard.
I'm not an hdd guru, so I demand for your help.
Thanks in advance.

If the disk can boot, what do you need to do? Can't you copy your files?

You can and should do a image of the disk to another one.

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Exactly, I can't copy my files.
I tried to do a clone copy with DriveImageXML, and it was failing, then I tried Easy Recovery Pro 6, and after a while, the drive gets disconnected from the system by itself, spoiling all the job (ERP kept running and writing data on the target drive, but there was no source, so everything copied after the disconnection was empty)!
In the meanwhile, while I was waiting for some answers, I tried to connect the drive with a sata-pata adapter, but I got the same issue as above.
Then I tried with an external 3.5" USB 2.0 box, I thought that with this one I won't get the drive disconnected, but after a while it got stuck
Actually isn't even being seen by Windows (from another drive naturally). I'd like to try to boot again but I'm afraid it's too late or it will worsen more
Isn't there a way (a program I guess) to reset the drive board, and/or the S.M.A.R.T. parameters?
And maybe a guide for doing it, avoiding errors?
Thank you!

You keep pounding on the drive making the condition worse. What you need to try to do (and keep in mind, this will still put stress on the drive) is try to make a complete drive image using something like ddrescue in Linux. If the imaging process fails, well you will need a pro at that point, BlackST in Italy and highly recommended, but keep in mind, the more you attempt to recover the data yourself, the higher the risk to completely losing your data, and probably the higher the cost for Pro recovery.

Esistono soluzioni ma costano circa 10.000 Euro e devi sapere anche cosa fare. In breve : se vuoi fare da solo, ammesso che non ti muoia tra le mani il drive, puoi tentare un po' di tutto. O chiedi aiuto.
There are solutions, the cost is about 10k Eur and need know how. In a nutshell if you want to diy , if the drive doesn't die in your hands, there are plenty of things to try. Or ask for help.

@BlackST:
Grazie della risposta.
Seee, 10.000 euro, se ce l'avevo a quest'ora non stavo certo qui
Sti maledetti Maxtor fanno sempre più schifo e proprio adesso questo maledetto ha deciso di cominciare a morirmi tra le mani
Ho provato a fare il boot, ma verso la metà mi appare un BSOD con errore "unmountable volume" (o qualcosa di simile) presumo quindi che non riesce più a rimanere stabile neanche per conto suo, oltre che da un windows già avviato.
Ma quel che vorrei capire è se è la scheda del disco o il disco stesso che non funziona, perché sembra che i dati ci siano ancora sopra.
Ora che mi viene in mente, mi pare di aver fatto un paio di error scan con hdtune e i risultati non erano proprio identici, ma non ci ho fatto caso più di tanto.
A me basterebbe che rimanga stabile anche solo una volta per fargli il backup, che poi lo butto anche sto infame merdstor!
Cosa mi suggerisci?

@pclab & XanderSholtz:
Thanks for the answer and for pointing me at BlackST.
As I said to him, I tried to boot but I got a BSOD in the middle with "unmountable volume" (or something like that), so it seems that's unstable in every condition, and that I want to know if it's the board or the disk itself that's broke, since it seems like the data is still there. I barely recall that I made more than one hdtune error scan and the reports weren't exactly identical, but i didn't care so much.
I'd like to make it stable just once for back it up, then I can throw away this infamous drive!

Uff, finalmente, dopo averlo sbattuto un po' e aver limitato di nuovo il canale ide su cui è installato (impostandolo manualmente nel bios a: pio mode 0, swdma 0 o 2 o uno dei più bassi, disattivando il 32 bit transfer e il multiblock transfer, disattivando anche la lettura dello S.M.A.R.T., e limitando pure il driver a "Solo PIO") sono riuscito a farlo vedere di nuovo a Windows (completamente, intendo, gestione risorse mi apre il drive come prima).
Adesso procedo con il backup a manina, senza usare ERP, così se un file è corrotto non lo copia, solo che è estenuante, visto che ad ogni file corrotto si blocca e devo farlo ripartire escludendolo ovviamente dal backup.
Non sai se c'è un copiatore che mi permette di fare questo backup automaticamente senza che si blocchi ad ogni file corrotto ed escludendolo dalla copia automaticamente?
Grazie.

English:
I achieved to remount the drive again, and explorer see it again so i can browse inside the folders/dirs again, luckily.
Now I'm backing it up manually through explorer, but every corrupted files break the transfer, so I have to restart it every time: isn't there a software that do this backup without stopping at every corrupted file and automatically avoiding the copy of it?
Thanks.

Some Windows versions ship with XCOPY.EXE.

You can execute it in a DOS window as follows:

XCOPY source destination /R /I /C /H /K /E /Y

Type XCOPY /? for help.

Alternatively, there is a better freeware version:
http://www.xxcopy.com/
http://www.xxcopy.com/xcpydnld.htm

xcopy richkey? heheh - nice way to remember.

Your hard drive is starting to have serious problems with bad sectors. Even after you clone the hard drive some files like your outlook will be corrupt and might need to be recovered/repaired.

The best thing is to clone the hard drive but given the severity and that it "disconnects" i would advise not to batter it any more. It could be causing more damage like suggested.

Do not boot up the windows on that drive any more either. Get a new hard drive- install windows from fresh then connect the old one as a slave.
There is a program called teracopy- copy all the files you need with it- it will skip on errors and not loose the list in case it fails. The options are easy and understandable to set.

Once you are done and happy with what you got- store the old one in a safe place incase you forgot something.

If the result was un satisfactory- you should sent it to somebody with special equipment and the ability to reconstruct corrupt data (such as pst form outlook for example- this is one large file and if one sector is damaged- then outlook will tumble over on trying to load it- so it would need hours of time to reconstruct a proper pst file)

--- and make sure to monitor the progress of copying. If it seems to get stuck for a longer than usuall period- skip the file or pause the process and skip. If this happens frequently and has no success you should stop immediately and find somebody with that equipment.

Be careful how you handle the drive and never handle it while it is copying, spinning up or spinning down.

Good luck

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And G fill up... Until...

Is that a pun?
I checked the switches and I dun think they will fit my case


Oh, yeah, that's right, but luckily I already moved my outlook express database months ago in the second hard drive with the newer windows installation, where I linked the new windows' O.E. to the same database that were shared between the two installations, so I had the convenience of access my history emails from both installation. I just have to move accounts and filters, I tried to search for a guide some time ago and I tried (exporting registry data) but I didn't have so much luck with that.
Maybe OE is crashing due to some other application file that's now corrupted.


What do you mean by "batter"? Physically?


I dunno if it was clear, but I already had a new windows installed in a second (good conditions) drive. Thanks for the advice tho.


Oh, that was what I needed, thank you very much. I'm trying it right now.


I'm moving good condition files, for now, then I try to retrieve data from corrupted ones, hoping they are not so much, retrying more for the most important ones.
Then, if I couldn't recover everything, and I can't do anything else, I'd store it away, hoping that I could recover later for cheap ^^


Luckily is not the case, but unluckily I stored so much gigs, that the drive was quite full, more or less


Yes, but this is just a case of home using drive (even tho it's for all purpose: gaming, internet browsing, email, camera photos, camera videos, some not-so-important word-processing documents as much as calc docs. In a word: every kind of file storage ^^) so it's not storing some life-saving data for some company, corporation or society. So I won't spend too much to recover data, since I'm already break in money :p


Yeah, naturally, I already knew that but thanks anyway for the advice
And thanks to fzabkar as well, even tho maybe he was having some fun

I actually do use XCOPY for backup purposes. Explorer bombs if it finds an open file, eg the Windows swap file.

As a rule, I try to do as much as possible with the available OS tools, my reasoning being that my favourite 3rd party tools may not be available to me when working on someone else's machine.

The reason I suggested XXCOPY is that there are some conditions under which XCOPY will fail to maintain existing long filename and short filename associations.

@fzabkar:
Thanks for your explaination.

Anyway TeraCopy doesn't seem to work very well, I think it gets stuck sometimes. In another forum someone suggested me Unstoppable Copier, that I tried and seems pretty good, doesn't stuck and tells me what's copied, what's skipped and how much the corrupted file is available in percent.

In the other hand I have the drive keeping disconnecting/unmounting from Windows, so to get it available again I have to switch it off then on again (I connected the drive to the source part of an USB 2.0 box adapter, and the ide interface directly to the motherboard, not to the USB box adapter), and do a plug and play search on device manager.

Essentially I have this two problems: corrupt data and the pcb that keeps acting bad and unmount itself from the computer (it does it even not in windows). I searched for a new drive (or a new pcb) on ebay and prices aren't so cheap even for the pcb alone
I hope there's a way to reset the PCB and S.M.A.R.T. data (I only suspect that the pcb/unmounting problem is related to the last one), since I don't have so much money to waste on recovering data from this f'in cr*pstor

E allora mi sa che devi utilizzare quello che hai. Non puoi fare altro.
GLi strumenti e le conoscenze tecniche per tirarti fuori velocemente tutti i dati e fare cio' che vorresti esistono, ma non sono gratis. Basta accontentarsi.

Then I think you have to deal with what you have, you can't do anything else.
Tools and technical K-H to quickly get all the data out and do what you want DO exist but it's not for free. Got to be happy with it.

Mazza, si vede che lavori per una di quelle società di recupero dati che chiedono centinaia se non migliaia di euro per recuperarli da un disco... :/

From what I gather, bad sectors, unmountable boot volume error, inaccessible in windows . . .
Just send it in. Bad sectors sometimes tend to accumulate with repeated recovery attempts.
And those are your files being eaten alive like PacMan dots.

It has all the makings of a firmware shit-fit. In which case a new PCB might work, but if it doesn't you're out $60-$150.

If you are still having no luck with it, ship it to us in Manhattan. If it needs new heads or system area repair, $500 is about what it will cost.
Graham
917-586-6687

Senza offesa si intende. Cmq non capisco una cosa: in questi ultimi momenti di prove, mi succede che Gestione periferiche mi vede il disco e il volume relativo, poi però in esplora risorse (o gestione dischi) niente. Dopo un po' si "smonta" pure da gestione periferiche, come se si scollegasse da solo.
Lo spengo, riaccendo, faccio cerca nuovi dispositivi, lo trova, lo rimonta in Gestione periferiche e poi sparisce di nuovo dopo un po'...
Secondo te può essere la scheda di controllo capricciosa?
Come posso determinarlo da me?

Hahaha, funny!, 500$ LOL
For a drive worth no more than 40-50 bucks (or euros).
I guess that at most I can get a new PCB from ebay for about 35-40 € (that's really much tho) or maybe an identical drive and switch platters myself.

Well, $500 is about the lowest cost you can find for a head stack assembly procedure, or an SA repair. Typically it'll be $1000+. About 80% of HDD failures are head related.

As far as swapping platters into another drive, curious to hear how that turns out.

In your stats maybe....



Into a disaster (in that case).