Imaging and Recovery Procedure questions

[arbalest]

A while back I posted a question about my problematic Diamond Max 10
200Gb, PATA 133. Both Steve and rchadwick thought it was a partition issue.

One more background detail is that for the most part the data is recoverable
from other sources. But what this HD represents is the best clean hierarchy
of a huge number of files from a large number of sources in which a great deal
of effort was made to organize them. So, the organization of the data (and the
work that went into it) is what makes it valuable to me. This disk was going to
be duplicated after I finished organizing it!

I have not been ready to attempt the imaging and data recovery
until now and I would like input on a few questions before I start:

1) Can the partition information/problem be fixed (i.e., the directory
structure) or is data recovery mainly about recovering files?

2) Reading here and elsewhere I think I will try R-Studio since
it can do the imaging and recovery parts and because it is
reasonably priced. Is there something else I really should be
using instead?

3) I was hoping to do this recovery with the bad drive and a new drive
each in USB enclosures I already have, rather then in the computer
attached to the IDE controller. Is this OK or is it better to have them
in the machine for some reason?

4) The bad drive is a 200Gb Maxtor but the image will be to a brand new
Seagate 500Gb drive. Is there any problem using different sized drives?

5) Since the new drive will be an image of the old drive I am not going
to bother formatting or any other processing on the new drive first.
Is that OK and will R-Studio be OK with that during the imaging and data
recovery phases?


Doing this much thinking about a problem before diving in is new for me
but I figure I'll be going for broke once I start.

I really appreciate any input you can give me.


=== from my original old post ========

Patient (Dead) drive :
Diamond Max 10 200Gb, PATA 133

Computer Management sees the drive,
Status: "Healthy, Active" (if it only knew),
Capacity: 189.91 (pretty accurate, it's a 200Gb)
Free Space: 189.91 (not true)
File System: blank (not true)
Layout: Partition
Type: Basic

If I attempt to Open or Explore from the Computer Management
window: "The system cannot find the device specified"

[EASEUS Data Recovery]

Hello,
I would like to answer your questions:
1) I think that Partition Problem Fixing and Data Recovery are two different concepts. Partition Problem Fixing means you should fix the MBR or DBR of the File System; But Data Recovery means you should save the files from the DATA section on the disk. There are different softwares to solve them.
2) I am not definitely sure whether I can show the name of software I recommended. I think you would find some useful information through my signature.
3) The program can support USB drive, so it does not matter.
4) No problem.
5) I have never used R-Studio, hence, I do not know.

[N.C.]

Hi arbalest,

I think you need to read out SMART infos before you try anything!
I am affraid this drive have a lot of bad sectors....

Regards,

Janos

[EASEUS Data Recovery]

Note:
If you want to recover the data, DO NOT any overwritten operations on the source partition.

[arbalest]

Thanks for the info Easeus. I will consider your software.

Janos/NC - you might notice from my post that I am new at this. You might mention why I should want to read the SMART info, how to read it and what to do with it once I read it.

From what I could find, the SMART info is a tally of the various kinds of detectable disk errors. I'm not sure how that helps me recovery anything.

[N.C.]

Janos/NC - you might notice from my post that I am new at this. You might mention why I should want to read the SMART info, how to read it and what to do with it once I read it.

Hi,

I am not read your old post, but from this topic, i can see, the windows cant find the FS on the partition.
I don't know whats happened, but i see a lot of hdds with bad sectors, and lost FS infos on it.
Thats why i suggest to check the SMART info befor you go to image the drive.

On the SMART info you can see the CURRENT PENDING and the OFFLINE UNCORRECTABLE sector counts.

On linux you can use smartmontool (smartctl) to do the readout, on windows, do a little search for some tool...

Regards,
Janos

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

A while back I posted a question about my problematic Diamond Max 10
200Gb, PATA 133. Both Steve and rchadwick thought it was a partition issue.

One more background detail is that for the most part the data is recoverable
from other sources. But what this HD represents is the best clean hierarchy
of a huge number of files from a large number of sources in which a great deal
of effort was made to organize them. So, the organization of the data (and the
work that went into it) is what makes it valuable to me. This disk was going to
be duplicated after I finished organizing it!

I have not been ready to attempt the imaging and data recovery
until now and I would like input on a few questions before I start:

1) Can the partition information/problem be fixed (i.e., the directory
structure) or is data recovery mainly about recovering files?

2) Reading here and elsewhere I think I will try R-Studio since
it can do the imaging and recovery parts and because it is
reasonably priced. Is there something else I really should be
using instead?

3) I was hoping to do this recovery with the bad drive and a new drive
each in USB enclosures I already have, rather then in the computer
attached to the IDE controller. Is this OK or is it better to have them
in the machine for some reason?

4) The bad drive is a 200Gb Maxtor but the image will be to a brand new
Seagate 500Gb drive. Is there any problem using different sized drives?

5) Since the new drive will be an image of the old drive I am not going
to bother formatting or any other processing on the new drive first.
Is that OK and will R-Studio be OK with that during the imaging and data
recovery phases?


Doing this much thinking about a problem before diving in is new for me
but I figure I'll be going for broke once I start.

I really appreciate any input you can give me.


=== from my original old post ========

Patient (Dead) drive :
Diamond Max 10 200Gb, PATA 133

Computer Management sees the drive,
Status: "Healthy, Active" (if it only knew),
Capacity: 189.91 (pretty accurate, it's a 200Gb)
Free Space: 189.91 (not true)
File System: blank (not true)
Layout: Partition
Type: Basic

If I attempt to Open or Explore from the Computer Management
window: "The system cannot find the device specified"

Hi ,
Some Good Data Recovery Programs Will Be From Get Data Back Also ..

[pepe]

Hello Arbalest,

Copying an image of the drive is the best thing u can chose as a first step.
If the drive has bad sectors, U will see during imaging.
If not, U will have a copy U can work on (never modify the data on the disk u want to recover)
Since this process can take really long time I recommend not to put the drives inside the USB enclosures, but leave them laying naked on the table and use some active cooling especially for the source drive. It would be reasonable to completely turn off defect relocation during the process, but I think U cannot do that with R-studio or similar imaging tools, correct me if I am wrong here.
Then u can try logical recovery on the image.
pepe

[EASEUS Data Recovery]

Thanks for the info Easeus. I will consider your software.

Janos/NC - you might notice from my post that I am new at this. You might mention why I should want to read the SMART info, how to read it and what to do with it once I read it.

From what I could find, the SMART info is a tally of the various kinds of detectable disk errors. I'm not sure how that helps me recovery anything.

If your disk has some bad sectors and clusters, it will influence on data recovery.
Hence, I suggest you'd better use the 'chkdsk' command of 'cmd' to check and fix them.

[rchadwick]

'chkdsk' is a great idea.... AFTER making an image.

[pepe]

Chkdsk sucks at any time...

pepe

[shahij]

Never try to run CHKDSK/Scandisk or any other tool like those to the original hdd where datas are located. those tools are not for bad sactor fixing tools. they r only file system fixing tools. it will lose your data more. dont follow the instruction of EASEUS Data Recovery in this situation.
i hava past experience in this situation a lot. CHKDSK/Scandisk damage more data if bad sectors.

Image the hdd to a good one. then try to recover ur data.

Best way to try professional help/service.

[hddbug]

HI
As shajij has mentioned , running any tools on the crashed disk could be fatal. If data is important i suggest to handover it to professional DR company. Disk imaging or cloning is done using standalone hardware where one can set advanced parameters like Read retries / Read time , cloning backword /forward etc. It is always better to use dos based tools. Windows at times may give up cloning if too many bad sectors encountered or may get hanged where you will not come to know whats going on.
Thanks & Regards
Hddbug

[dick]

I also wouldn't recommend that you go staight in and start imageing the drive to another as this might cause other problems. For example if there are many bad sectors you might end up killing the drive.
My approach is to mount the drive in a pc and boot from another drive. Dos, linux or windows you can take your pick. All of them have their merits.
In windows you could use R Studio and attempt to browse the drive. If you can see files and folders you can quickly recover the most important ones with the settings at 1 or 2 retry attempts. R studio is good for this as it will skip reading the bad sectors and the system is less likely to freeze.
This method has worked very well for me for many of the software recoveries I have carried out. Of course if you can't browse the folders in this way you would have to create an image one way or another. Your choices would likely be limited to what is available to you in both hard and software terms.

[arbalest]

I just wanted to follow up for the benefit of others that are experiencing the
same problems. Based on suggestions given on this board I have completely
recovered my data and learned a lot in the process.

The "bad" drive was 200Gb. I wound up using R-Studio and created
an image on a fresh new drive and did processing there.

(1) created image with "bad sector retries" set to 1 (run time ~ 5 hours)
(2) "scan" of the image looks like it found everything (scan ~2.5 hours)
(3) selected ALL files for recovery even though I didn't need all (recovery ~2.5 hours)

The recovered data (documents, music, etc) amounts to 107Gb according to
Windows -- 120,000 files. It will be a while before I can tell if the files are
all OK but random sampling looks good so far.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my questions.

[pepe]