Hitachi hts5450b9a300

[Dave48838]

Ok, I have gotten all the information off this drive. It has been intermittent for the customer as well as with me. Once I mount it, I can do anything as far as reading and writing. I'm guessing it has bad sectors as windows wouldn't boot and I couldn't copy a couple movies. I also had issues copying some music files.

The odd thing is, any time I hook it up direct to my motherboard, it would show up in bios as well mhdd, but hooking it up to my usb drive readers, it's intermittent. My motherboard boots off an ide hd and having the client's sata hooked up direct, it wants to boot off that. In my bios settings, I have the option to boot from cd, usb, or hard drive, not which hard drive. So I used the intermittent approach to recover his data. like I said, once I mounted, it's good to go.

So now I'm down to determining if the drive is salvageable . With these symptoms, what do you think or what further tests should I do?

[Nick_CT]

I'm slightly confused as to what you are trying to achieve. Are you only trying to recover the data, or are you wanting to establish if the drive can still be used reliably in future?

One reason, I would think, that it works better when connected directly to a SATA port, than through a USB interface, is because the SATA port has better error handling than the USB interface. Therefore you have more luck through the direct connection.

With regards to using the drive in future, I'm not sure why you would want to use it knowing it is not functioning properly? If you just wanted the data, you should image/clone it to another drive and then recover the data from there. You could use a program like ddrescue for that. You definitely shouldn't trust a drive with errors, it's just asking for trouble.

If you want to test the status/health of the drive then do a scan in MHDD and have a look at the SMART values to give you a rough idea. SMART is by no means an accurate measure, but it has its worth.

[Dave48838]

"Are you only trying to recover the data, or are you wanting to establish if the drive can still be used reliably in future?"

The ladder. I was able to recover most everything, I'm thinking it had some errors in the beginning of the drive - windows and somewhere between the beginning and the end. I think one or two of his movies didn't copy.

But yeah, I was wondering why it was working every time with the onboard but what you said makes sense. brain fart or something.

I will do a scan with mhdd and post the results later.

[Nick_CT]

From what you've said it would be an accurate guess to say that the drive has some bad/unreadable sectors. These things only ever get worse, so doing a scan in MHDD will be 'interesting' to see the results, but trivial in the bigger picture.

You really don't want to trust your data to a drive like this. It's like trusting your life savings to a Nigerian who tells you that you've just won the Spanish lottery....twice.

The bad sectors will become greater in number and the drive's health will go from bad to worse, or might just die on the spot. Now that you've got the data off, either bin the drive or keep it/sell it for parts.

[Dave48838]

Well, it was a lot worse than I thought. MHDD was lit up like a Christmas tree. Being that I was able to get so much off the drive, I didn't think it was that bad. I'm at home now and I don't have the results here but they didn't look good. I already talked him into a new drive.

My other questions were already answered. I will post the results tomorrow, if I remember.

Dave

From what you've said it would be an accurate guess to say that the drive has some bad/unreadable sectors. These things only ever get worse, so doing a scan in MHDD will be 'interesting' to see the results, but trivial in the bigger picture.

You really don't want to trust your data to a drive like this. It's like trusting your life savings to a Nigerian who tells you that you've just won the Spanish lottery....twice.

The bad sectors will become greater in number and the drive's health will go from bad to worse, or might just die on the spot. Now that you've got the data off, either bin the drive or keep it/sell it for parts.

[cpuhost]

External usb drive controllers dislike any jumpers on drives and or Master / Slave Situations. It really depends on the enclosure.
With sata i have seen trouble with certain makes/models. Its unlikely that the jumpers would be a factor on a sata laptop drive though.

Have you ran manufacturer diagnostics on the drive and verified that its working. (on the onboard controller)

Run a short test and long test and verify the smart attributes. If you don't care about data - perform a zero on the drive
and see if that completes.

Some enclosures also use cheap USB connectors and sometimes those can come loose from the back of the enclosure or PCB inside it.
Secondly check the connections on the sata connection inside the enclosure and power connection inside the enclosure.

You may want to swap the working SATA cable from your motherboard if everything else checks out.

[Dave48838]

MHDD came up with the diagnosis "CATASTROPHIC FAILURE"

Thanks all for your time, like I said, he's got a new drive on the way.

[Nick_CT]

MHDD came up with the diagnosis "CATASTROPHIC FAILURE"

I love the wording that program uses