Ok I think I've got a weird problem here. I've a WD5000AAKS (500gig drive) that I got several years ago and just yesterday it disappeared from windows. The drive has some assorted stuff on it that I'd like to get back but worst case scenario I can get it elsewhere again. Doing a cold reboot showed it just fine in bios but windows would then hang for several minutes while booting only to boot up and make the drive disappear again.

Anyways I researched around and watched a few hours worth of vids from various cons on the topic. I d/led a cd boot version of MHDD and gave it a whirl. All the serial info/drive size/label etc were reported fine and the SMART table was working so I was hoping I might be lucky. I then ran a scan and it was plodding along fine till it hit the ~170000th sector and it just err'ed and stopped and reported device disconnected. I tried to do scans bypassing the spot it stopped at but at best I'd get to scan a few hundred sectors and the same would happen. If I tried to scan way past that point I'd get to scan a few hundred sectors and then the scan would stall and the drive would be stuck in a permanent busy state. I'd then have to do a total cold boot again for it to start working.

I assume if I even try to copy an image it's just going to do the same thing so I'm at a loss at this point. Anyone have a clue what might be causing this lockup or whatever? I don't know as I'd try to repair it but I'm somewhat interested now in the whole process and curious about what else I could try.

A pro can offer very high success with expensive tools in your case. Yes if you image it will have same problem but if your willing to experiment and sacrifice you could attempt it anyhow.

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Sounds like it could be a bad/weak head. No DIY here I'm afraid.

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The problem is very simple and the solution is simple as well, but nobody on this forum will help you. So bring it to a pro or trash it. The choice is yours.

Probably one (or more) head is dead.
If you don't want to pay for DR, download http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html.
There's free version you can clone your hd. Cloning could take very very long time. If only one head is damaged it can take 200-300 hours.

You can clone it using DMDE (also free version).

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After 1-2 hours it will die completely and professional recovery will then rise from $300 to $3000.

Before DIY is attempted, this should be considered.

I'va had one of those WD5000AAKS 2 weeks ago. It had 1 bad head and copying it took 5 days. About 80% of data has been recovered.

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Then you got lucky.

Interesting. I would of thought that if the heads were bad that it wouldn't continue to screw up in the exact same location. If one of the heads is good shouldn't it be able to read like half the drive at least?

Unfortunately in this case the stuff on the drive isn't even worth 100 bucks to me so professional recovery would be overkill. How would I attempt to clone any of it though when it keeps locking up so fast?

It is possible with right tools, but half the drive does not mean half the data. Also, lots of data may be damaged as data generaly occupies multple surfaces.

If data is not important, and you want ot try cloning then there are some suggestions a few posts previous or the topic of cloning has been covered several times in this forum. Some suggestions there maybe.

I am afraid that's not the way it works!

Well I know how to clone or make an image with ddrescue and stuff like that. The thing that has me stumped is how I would do that when the drive locks up even in MHDD and won't reset without a hard reboot.

If you had other more sophisticated gear probably the question would either had an answer or would haven't been asked at all.
No, I don't mean software stuff.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? I think the thread made clear I'm not going to spend money on something like Deepspar or professional recovery. Some implied I could maybe get something with software cloning so I was merely curious how that would work when the drive locks up.

This was suggested only because appropriate equipment is not an option for you, making this your only option, regardless of the outcome.

You may be lucky, but probably not.

Yes I totally understand that. In fact I understood that before I came on here. I've very little emotional investment in whether or not I lose the whole thing.

What I'm trying to ask though is what software would I even use that wouldn't lockup the drive? MHDD definitely locks it up on anything past the 170k sector or so (aka 99% of the drive). Is there some weird situation where if I use something like dd_rescue in reverse it might not lockup?

You would likely need a hardware imager, which could repower and send reset commands to the disk. Not sure any software can do this for you...

That's what I thought when I made the original post. I got confused that people were suggesting I try software imaging. Thanks for the info. I might mess around with it a bit but sounds like I should just toss it on a shelf somewhere at this point.