if anyone can suggest software to do this please comment .

@crumb110:

Interesting question, but there's too little info for it to be worth me trying to reply yet, without much more detail - otherwise I (and other members here) would spend all our time saying things like: "If you mean A then try X; if you mean B then try Y; if you mean C then try Z but don't forget L, M & N"

Can you start by explaining (a) what exactly you're trying to achieve, in more detail than your single-line title, with some examples; (b) what software & techniques you've tried already; and (c) exactly how what you've tried already didn't achieve what you wanted.

(d) Please explain exactly what you mean by "damaged areas" - that isn't a well-defined term, and will mean different things to different readers. Sure I can guess, but if I'm wrong then, again, any explanation from me will just be a waste of time.

(e) Please explain why you would want to "recover" data from a disk, but ignoring "damaged areas" - you might have data that you want to recover, which is in a "damaged area". Hopefully your answers to the above questions will already explain this, but if you don't think they explain this point, can you answer it specifically?

(f) Finally, how familiar are you with the level of control which normal operating systems and applications have, over ATA disk error recovery?

There may be more clarification needed later, but hopefully your full, clear and complete answers to those initial questions will help to clarify the area of discussion for any members here who reply.

Hi , the hdd has been wiped with most things : dban,akilldisk,various wipes available on gparted and some others to . However a lot of them crash at around 90% . Some that may not listen to the errors don't . However I am not sure if they are working . The hdd makes a noise at that point and sound like its starting up again a click then rev up again .

So looking to see if i can recover anything from the areas that may be functioning within the parts that are damaged . If not then i would like to wipe them and encrypt the drive , I tried true crypt but that doesn't complete if parts are damaged .

I tried looking at the hdd on hex but it starts hanging when i get to the parts that are damaged .

@crumb110:

Thanks for the info. That didn't exactly answer all of my questions, but I think I get enough of a picture to give an reply.

In short, you seem to be trying to prove that no data is readable from "damaged areas" after the disk has been (or tried to be) erased - where "damaged" on this disk means an area which causes the disk to spin down and/or click (probably meaning that the servo is unreadable in this area(s)). If that's what you're trying to prove, then you're trying to do the impossible IMHO

Using normal commands, then you cannot check what exists on areas of the disk which you cannot read - but that does not mean that other people, with better equipment, would be unable to read from those areas. This is why, if there are any errors during disk erasure, then you cannot rely on that erasure.

Given that you don't need the data on this disk, and it is clearly faulty, then if you want to ensure other people can't read it, you'll need to use a physical destruction mechanism - several are available, depending on your level of paranoia. As an extreme example, one of the UK research establishments puts platters from faulty disks into concentrated acid, to ensure complete destruction. Shredding of disks is a common commercial alternative.

I know how to destroy a hdd . Surely its possible to scan the full hdd for data and not attempt to recover from the bad areas / or at least not retry them if failed once .

Also please recommend fde software that doesn't stop / undo encryption if there is bad sectors / same for erase .

@crumb110:

I've obviously not understood enough of your problems to give you a reply that answers whatever your real question(s) are, as some seem to be contradictory.

What you ask here is possible:


Yes - investigate ddrescue, its retry options and its log. Using that I can scan a disk for data, and not attempt to retry from areas which failed once, which is your question above.

Good luck with whatever you seek. I'll let others reply further - I'm stopping here.

fde that ignores damaged , bad areas and continues process encrypting what it can , sure I know erasure but feel free to advise .

Reading and writing to a drive is pretty much limited to how damaged a drive is.
Depending on the tools you have, it is possible to work around the damaged areas and recover and erase data.

Encrypting a damaged drive is different story as encryption software is not designed for this. It is designed to work on healthy drives, thus not smart enough to skip damaged areas.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts