Running fine prior to last shutdown. Powered it up and got "reboot and select proper boot device". I replaced the drive and returned computer to my son. (college student and needed quickly).

Problem is he has family pictures on bad drive.....some of which are backed up but still some recent losses. I tried my usual...slaved it to another box, ran Knoppix intending to copy files, but the drive is not seen.

My plan is to ddrescue a copy of this drive to another hd and attempt to recovery from copy. Is this the best next step?

Neither one of have $$ for high dollar recovery so that's not an option. If I can't recover it will probably go in the trash bin. I don't care about saving the drive, only data.

Any advice on recovery tool of choice would be appreciated. (open source or under $100 would be nice)

Thanks much,
Mike

If the drive is not detected at all, there's no way you can run any software on it

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

Ok, thanks. I thought if bios could see drive (which it can) there was hope.

So it is detected in BIOS but not by any OS? Is it detected as Maxtor CALYPSO?

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

Yes, detected last time I tried by bios but not operating system. I'm not sure if it saw as CALYPSO.

I can check again...I was just trying not to run except when necessary.

If its detects as Calypso, its a Service Area damage. You'll need special tools and knowledge to fix it.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

Bios sees as: Maxtor 6Y120L0

Your drive is too old...
This problem can be anything of known problems or any combination of those...

If your drive is in bios 6Y.... and not Calypso, this shows, the drive is inicialized correctly, but still can be some SA problem wich prevents the translator to get alive...
The disappear in OS can be translator problem in SA, can be damaged sectors on the very beginning of the drive, but can be damaged/dirty/weak head as well.
If the drive appear in BIOS like 6Y...., but linux says can't read the drive with fdisk /dev/?d?, there is no good way to recover this drive under any linux distro.
If the drive starts to clicking, stop it immediately, and seek for professional help.
But anyway, you should do this before do any attempt.
You can save a lot of money with this, if you don't try to recover alone....

Good luck.

Janos

Thanks for the reply Janos,

The drive was manufactured in 2003....granted that's pretty old, but too old for what?....too old to function?

The two choices are fix it myself or throw it in the trash.....

Are there any other options that I can attempt myself?

Well, i always suggest to all of my customers to not use drives >2 years old.
Even if the warranty period is >2 years!
These drives are not trustable at all, but the failure rate goes much higher after 1.5-2 years....
If you don't want to drop the drive away, you can move it to totally not important place (like windows swap drive only ).



Well, you can use MHDD to disable the MBR (if the drive can do that at all), than use getdataback under windows, and you can force the drive to squeeze out your data.
If you are lucky, some of the data will goes back.
if not, the drive will die, and will goes more closer to the trash...

Janos

Ok, thanks much for the advice Janos.

Mike