All of a sudden, my computer rebooted itself and stopped at the initial screen showing the warning message that the hard disk failure is imminent and that I should back up my data. Press F2 to continue. When the F2 was pressed, the system hanged; windows vista did not load.
Sick Hard Disk: Western Digital model WD5000KS (500GB) SATA
When I plug this failed/faulty hard disk as a secondary drive in my another computer, it is recognized/detected as a D: drive but the computer cannot display any files and folders from this drive D. In other words, my sick hard disk is visible but its files/folders are not visible.
My Western Digital hard disk (originally used as C drive) does NOT boot any more on my original HP computer having Windows Vista operating system (32-bit).
The HP Smart test result: Failed; Self test status value 4 (completed the test but the failed element unknown).

I downloaded the following freeware and as instructed booted my computer having only one sick drive using the MHDD4.6 CD:

MHDD 4.6
OS: DOS, Win9x/Me/NT/2k/XP
Rating: 5/5 - 528Kb
Freeware
MHDD is an utility for fast and informative low-level drive diagnostics. It performs fast (up to 20 Gb in 6 minutes) and accurate diagnostics of all the surface and heads of the HDD irrespective of the data located on it.

Here are the MHDD 4.6 scan results:
Time spent: 02:29:07
WDC WD5000KS - 00MNB0 976,773,168
AVG [54568 kb/s]
ACT [20709 kb/s]
<3ms 3472951
<10ms 304046
<50ms 53456
<150ms 24
<500ms 1
>500ms 2

Warning: 1598340
Error: 3830463
Error: 6293448
Error: 32772348
Error: 38932968
Warning: 579390600
Warning: 674463525

I am totally new to MHDD. Can anyone interpret the above results? How to recover my data from the sick hard drive? I will very much appreciate your help.
A screen shot was taken and the MHDD display showed that it is stored on .\log\scrshot.log. But how to get to this folder and copy the file? What DOS command to use to get to this folder? I wonder if this file was written on the CD I booted my computer with.

You've got some bad sectors. MHDD tests in blocks of 256 so each of those four errors could be up to 256 actual bad sectors.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Can MHDD copy the files with good sectors from the sick hard disk to another hard disk?

You need to "image" this drive as soon as possible. Then you can begin to repair the damage. See the post on MHDD on setup for large volume. Use "ATOF" command. Use "MAKELOG".

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HWHacker
Smiles

IMO trying to use ATOF is making things a lot more difficult on yourself than necessary

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Yes MHDD and atof are not ideal, just that he is using it.

_________________
HWHacker
Smiles

>You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.
Yes, I entirely agree with you. I need to recover data from only 2-3 folders. I am given to understand that I must first create an image of the sick hard disk so that the data can be recovered from the created image file. I even tried to do so using a commercial data recovery program. After the program ran for more than 72 hours with the progress showing merely 485 MB of 465 GB done, suddenly the power went off for a few seconds and the that ended the program. Because there are numerous bad sectors on this hard disk the image creation (sector by sector) process becomes extremely slow. Since MHDD was able to complete its scanning in 2.5 hours of the entire 500 GB hard disk, I am thinking if it can also copy the good sectors from the sick hard disk to my external hard disk.
>Use "ATOF" command. Use "MAKELOG".
It appears from the above that MHDD can do so. But I need step by step instructions since I have the 500 GB large sick hard disk from which to copy to an external hard disk (this may have to be suitably formatted first to enable MHDD to write on it.)

>Use "ATOF" command.
"You can read several sectors or whole drive to a file or to set of files. MHDD skips bad sectors, if any. If you are planning to get more than 1 GB, it is better to use ATOF command (it just creates several files instead of one)."

Before I boot with MHDD CD to use the "ATOF" command, I want to make sure that MHDD will read all good sectors from my sick 500 GB internal hard disk (C: drive)and write to 500 GB external D: drive hard disk (connected to the USB port). Do I need to format the external hard disk (format d: /FS:FAT32) first? Will MHDD recognize/detect the external hard disk? Please help. Thanks.

If you get a large hard drive 700 Gig or 1T and install MHDD using 98SE DOS you will have enough space to hold the entire 500 Gig. The ATOF command will create many sequential files and a log of errors. Once this is done you have saved all the data you can from the old drive. Also by analyzing the logs you can decide if you have a bad head or just a miss aligned head or platters. Then you can decide what to do. in some cases on multiple head drives just loosening the screws that hold the head stack and tightening them again will reset the alignment, however it can also make things worse so be prepared to accept "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory". Then check with MHDD scan function to see if the good verses bad sectors have changed. If so then you have additional data to gather with TOF or ATOF command. After you have gathered all the data you can, use the FF command and a script to write the data to a new hard disk. Then partition repair (if needed) and file recovery can begin. In any case do not open the head disk assembly unless you are a very brave person and willing to risk never getting any more data. BTW, are you good at roiling dice, or do you have a link with heaven, either one will help.

Hope this helps.

_________________
HWHacker
Smiles

Sir ,
Image the drive ASAP with Prosoft Media tools As Condition of drive is not too bad it will work .

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Yup ,
For Drive without too Much Severe Media Faults it a Good Tool .

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

>I would try Prosoft Media Tools too. Try to clone the drive to another one.

Thanks. I have downloaded (the bootable CD created) the demo version of Data Rescue PC3 from Prosoft but unfortunately it does not allow me to clone the sick hard disk. It does allow me to specify my source drive (the sick 500 gb hard disk) and destination drive (my external 500 GB hard drive) when scanning. The scanning has warned after encountering some bad sectors that if continued my data might be lost so I have discontinued the scanning. Should I again run this scan? Or I must clone the hard disk by purchasing the program first. By the way, spinrite, Ontrack, R-studio, Active@ File Recovery Enterprise 7.5 have already failed in my situation.

sorry its too old post i dont see that.