I'm trying to recover data off of a dying HDD. When I run the HDD raw backup tool, it gets to the "Locking device" stage but does not proceed any further. Any ideas as to what I should do?

Hey Joey,

that would depend on how much you value the data on there.

If it's valuable to you, get the drive to a lab.

"Dying" is a bit vague, can you give anymore detail?
ie
- You can see the drive in windows but can't transfer files?

- It totally crashes anything attached to it etc etc

Kern

The drive first got really slow. Then i ran spinrite for a long time. Now, it won't boot at all. If i remove the drive and dock it into a sata to usb 3.0 adapter, i can see the drive in another windows installation, but the drive won't open. It hangs for hours.

Unfortunately Spinrite's usefulness for DR is over-sold, IMHO. Sorry to say that it was not appropriate to run Spinrite at that point. You took the (ever-present) risks of DIY and, unfortunately, your gamble didn't work and it's made things worse.

If the data is valuable, stop now (or preferably stop before now!), and consider getting professional help as digitalferret said. However if you're just playing and the data has no value, then give the make & model of the drive, and it might be possible for you to do more work (depending on time, money, available equipment etc.) and get more details from a terminal log about how the drive is failing (likely media read errors, at a guess). If you have Linux skills, it might also be possible to get some more hints about the type of problem from the kernel messages during boot, and perhaps to take an alternative approach - but with no guarantee of success using DIY software-only cloning, based on the behaviour which you describe.

I booted my computer off of a USB stick with Ubuntu 12.10 installed on it. When I opened the dying drive, it worked like a charm. I was able to transfer all the files with ease. Does anybody know why this worked in a Linux install but not in Windows???

The differences between OS (e.g. timeouts, retry counts etc.) can make one OS more tolerant of the behaviour of a failing drive, than another OS. It is not uncommon for *nix to cope better with a failing drive, as previous examples over the years on this forum show. That is why (if you were going to continue taking the risks of DIY) I suggested that it was worth seeing what happened with Linux.

This doesn't change the fact that you were lucky - don't use SpinRite before getting expert advice on your options. This topic has been discussed here before.

Congratulations on recovering your files.

Well first, congrats on getting the files back safely.
It's not the first time linux has been the "go to" solution to pull files out of a corrupt Win system.

Its just a different set of rules and controls.

Could bore you with technical differences between windows and linux which may be spot on or wide of the mark in your case.

Simplistic but entertaining analogy:
Smith: Windows v Neo: Linux

"Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you." *8)

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