I'm not sure if anyone can help me but I'm really hoping someone can atleast point me in the right direction.

I have a WD 2GB Caviar Green that is giving me issues. I need to try and recover the data so that I can just scrap the drive and move on.

I'm guessing that the issues are heat related. The hard drive was installed into a server computer where one of the main fans malfunctioned and shortly after the hard drive was not recognized by windows anymore. After noticing the error at 1 in the morning I figured I'd just deal with it in the morning and try and copy the data off. Apparently overnight the computer restarted and managed to perform a CHKDSK on it which I believe caused even more issues.

Where I'm at now is the drive is inaccessible by windows and is littered with read errors. The drive shows up fine in the bios and is recognized by windows but the partition isn't shown and upon going into the disk management the window just freezes. I've tried loading it in linux as well as partedmagic and when trying to mount the drive the computer freezes.

I've managed to get it to read by EaseUS disk copy and it is copying data but is incredibly slow. I've had it running overnight (10 hours) and it's only managed to copy 7gb of data.

I'm not sure if I should let this continue and hope that it copies the data or should try and repair the hard drive in some way first?

I'd be willing to donate for any help given! Any help you gurus can provide is graciously appreciated!!

If you're willing to DIY, let it continue to copy even if it's very slow then you'll work on the copy.
BUT BE AWARE that it could destroy the HDD.
If your data really matters, you should probably give it to a pro since it's seems to me that the heads are dying...

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Lemmy

Thanks for the replies - I appreciate the feedback.

Giving the hard drive to a pro is unfortunately out of the question. I'd be willing to buy the necessary tools but I'm not going to pay someone to snoop through my files. I've thought about buying PC3000 but honestly wouldn't even know where to start if I did have it.

I've let the EaseUS tool run without stopping it and its still recovering but extremely slowly and I'm at 33gb total.

I also figure I'd mention that only about 1-2 gb of the files total are actual ones that I need to recover. With it the way it is now though I don't know if it would be possible to navigate and copy just those files.

Is Prosoft Media better enough that it would be worth it to stop this copy and start over?

Prosoft media tools might be a better option for you, assuming you take the DIY risks that your drive could die at any point and take your data with it.

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No offense but I feel like unfortunately 90% of this forum is just personal promotion to try and sell their professional services. I don't see why this information is so secretive. I understand trying to protect "trade secrets" but it seems like the whole discussion of hard drive repair is taboo to talk about.

With that said I don't see what the big deal with trying to help someone diagnose their hard drive is. If there is public information available I'm willing to read and learn but I've done plenty of searching and digging and not coming up with much.

With a list of symptoms that the hard drive is displaying I imagine it could be narrowed down to a few things right? If these can't be diagnosed without professional tools then that would be good to know as well. I'm not opposed to spending thousands of dollars to recover the data but i'm NOT going to send the hard drive to someone to repair for me.

Not really - it's just more complicated and more difficult to do remotely (i.e. via a web forum) than you seem to realise. See:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=12671


Again, that's not an uncommon view by people who don't realise the complexities involved.

Sometimes it becomes obvious quite quickly that further discussion, without having the failing drive in the hands of someone with the necessary equipment and skills, is a waste of time and the limits of remote diagnosis have been reached.

The same thing happens with Doctors - some people think that Doctors should be able to diagnose a pain via a web forum, despite the patient being at home 1000s of miles away, having no CT scanner, no X-ray machine, the Doctor can't feel the patient's body looking for abnormalities etc. and then the patient gets frustrated that a Doctor can't exactly diagnose their problem, with some types of symptoms. Of course in other cases, diagnosis is easy! It all depends...


See the link above which explains why there isn't much public info.


You've already had some reasonable guesses kindly supplied by other members, based on the limited information supplied about the drive's current symptoms, along with warnings about the risks of continuing with DIY.

If you want a more detailed diagnosis without using the services of a DR company, then you'll need to buy and learn how to use diagnostic tools (and take responsibility for all the associated risks) if you want to perform an exact diagnosis yourself. That will take you a long time, especially as you'll want to buy and practice on other drives first, because the tools you will be using are so complex & dangerous that one wrong click and, in some cases, you'll never successfully recover your data. That's before you get to the intricacies of cleanroom work e.g. sourcing and replacing internal parts, if your diagnosis points in that direction.

It's your data, your choice, your money, your risk. Just don't come back here claiming that it should have been easy to fix, and blaming us when you make things worse, as you've already been advised that your plan is unlikely to succeed and it's unreasonable to expect hand-holding through each step via a web forum. OK? Good luck with your drive - perhaps the cloning will complete before the drive dies...

Mediatools to me is not a good idea on a drive in this state. It likely will hang continuously, take forever and sooner the drive will become unresponsive. My 0.02...

use ddrescue to clone your hdd to another drive

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