lol. I like this series

Seriously. And sorry to say, sounds to me like a whole (Partial) fake story.

Anyway, I wish a good luck

Given this


Probably heads just stuck to the surface.

After "operation", which was not, you got a ton of bad blocks.
One problem is resolved, the second born.
Now you need to read those files which has MFT-damages.
Lucky / unlucky.
Use Data Extractor for example.

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Angel Data Recovery

I made a video of the transplant, as soon as I get my computer fully operational I will post the video. Actually I'm stuck using Knoppix from my thumbdrive. No windows, nothing actually, as you will see on the video.

Any suggestion about data recovery solutions? I was thinking on use Acronis to do the clone, but i'm scared that may be too much stress on the failing hardware, what do you think?

really?!! Why? What's strange with what appen to me? Do you really think someone will spend time to fake a story? For what?

Come on guys try to help me instead of tease...please

Thank you

Ddrescue, dd_rescue, and HDClone are freeware cloning utilities that know how to work around bad sectors. They can also clone your drive in reverse, effectively disabling lookahead caching.

HDClone: http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html
dd_rescue: http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/
ddrescue: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html

Comparison between ddrescue and dd_rescue:
http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Dd_rescue

See the following thread for a discussion of commercial and freeware cloning/imaging utilities:

The Best Disk Cloning Hardware/Software:
the-best-disk-cloning-hardware-software-t10396.html

BTW, as well as transferring the platter, did you also transfer the original PCB to your donor drive?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks fzabkar for your help, yes I swapped back the PCB also, is that important regarding they are the same PCB model?

I was thinking doing the recovery through Windows using HDClone, but my HDD is not found on that damn Windows XP.

Let's do it through Knoppix then, I will use DDRescue it seem to be more popular...

So far my physical disk and the two partitions have been found by Knoppix, seem to be on the good way!

Now, I just hope the HDD will survive long enough to clone all the data.

URGENT!!!

everything was fine on my recovery till I get that:

knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ ddrescue -n /dev/sdb5 /dev/sda5 logfile


Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued: 1162 MB, errsize: 297 GB, errors: 1
Current status
rescued: 1162 MB, errsize: 297 GB, current rate: 0 B/s
ipos: 298585 MB, errors: 1, average rate: 0 B/s
opos: 298585 MB
Trimming error areas...
ddrescue: write error: Input/output error


What is that "trimming error area", and what to do?
same for "ddrescue: write error: Input/output error"?

I found out, I will let you know once everything finish...

So...(if I read all of this correctly) I suppose nobody thought to mention that besides the platters, opening the drive, the transplant and so on, that once you open the drive it will destroy itself because of dust particles in the air?
Had a friend once who thought of cleaning his PC case. He cleaned the fans, the radiators, the motherboard, the RAM, he opened up the CPU and cleaned the platters etc. Guess what happened later?

The OP's CPU has only one platter. :)

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

) LOL! Sorry about that. A little tired from last night. What I meant to say was that he opened the HDD and cleaned the platter. There's one story down the drain..

So far 40GB have been already rescue... ddrescue still saving my files, it's a very good recovery tool!!!

As promise, once all done, I will post the video of the platter transplant and also an step by step about ddrescue. I spent some time to find out how to set and use ddrescue properly.


But for now, please find my post conclusion:

Lot of people (like in this thread) will tell you to not open your drive and send it to a profesional, the same people who own or work in this kind of company I guess. The ones will ask you 2000-3000$ for recovery your most precious souvenir. For me, so far, this industry and the ''clean rooms'' are a scam, using the distress of poeple to make money, and keeping all them knowledge as secret to make sure it will be no other way to go to them if you want recover your data. Anyway, I fully support Scott Moulton (google is your friend), as he said if you have money and you don't want to take any risk of loosing your data go to a recovery company, is the best choice. But if you no that rich, let's try to do it by yourself in most of the case you will recovery your data without big pain (swap PCB, or even just run ddrescue). It's nothing really magic in an hard drive. It's lot of poeple like Scott Moulton posting videos and tutorial to help people who can't pay such a price to recover them data and souvenir.

Special thank's for Fzabkar, the only one in 27 post of this thread who try to help giving some ideas and positive recommendation, instead of said (like the 26 other ones): you crazy! if you just open it just for a sec all your data will be lost... come on guys, wake up! be realistic, hdd in 2010 are more robust then it was in 1990's. If you own or work in recovery company, be honest and just said: bring it to me, I want your money!

Again I invite all of you to have look on the videos of Scott Moulton who is an recovery data specialist then you will know all the true about this mascarade industry. Start here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCapEFNZAJ0

Important: don't open WD multi platter coz the top of the drive is what keep the platter aligned, and don't try to tranplant platter in a multi platter hdd. This apart your welcome to do anything on an hdd by yourself...
Have look on internet, on videos, etc... before do anything on your drive, be patient, and learn ou to do. Even if is nothing magic on hard drives, is a lot of common sense to consider if you gonna open it. Do it on a room as clean as possible, no fan near to your table, don't put your finger on the platter, don't try to clean the platter is not a pan, don't play much with the head, etc...

hi
nice work ZX600A could you mention the complete model number of both Drives....

Sure,

both are same, WD3200BEVT-22A23T0

they are 320GB single platter, double head drives, from Acer Aspire One netbooks.

so you have only managed to clone 40GB in 2 days? It doesn't like the procedure was that successful. Disk will probably die before it's finished. How do you know you are saving the data you actually need?

Actually, to be more precise 30 GB the size of m have been rescued during the first 3 or 4 hours using this command:
ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdb5 /dev/sda1 logfile
(copy of non-tried blocks)

once finished, I start splitting of failed blocks using this command:
ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sdb5 /dev/sda1 logfile

So far I have an additional 10GB rescued, but I agree that the rescue of failed blocks is a lot longer. It's an 6 month old computer so I never had much data, this partition never contain more then 40GB of data, so I guess the 40GB of data rescued are the 40GB of data I'm looking for...

ZX600A : What most people tried to warn you about is : the drive will work if you open it but it will deteriorate very very fast, a result which you are probably seeing --->slow transfer speeds because the drive is working like crazy to read something. When you opened the drive, you did see in one of the corners a little white bag, didn't you? Guess what that does--->collect dust particles in the air which might damage the platter.
For what it's worth, you could even open up a brand new drive and just leave it open. Chances are it will fail in a couple of weeks at most.
If you want to recover your data right here, right now, swapping the PCB and platters is a very good idea but after that you'll end up with 2 dead drives. I hope you are saving your data on a good drive.
Anyway, good luck with the recovery and thanks for the links!

I'm totally agree with you UzY3L... I can't said anything more.

As you said it's an temporary solution for rescue the data to a new one, once done both drives (the failing and the donor) must be trash.

No, you have cloned 40GB (worth of sectors) from your 320GB (worth of sectors) drive. Ddrescue doesn't know anything about where your data lives, it just copies as many sectors (full or empty) as it can from the entire disk.


When dealing with important data, how much do you think it is worth to some business or serious individual to not have to just pray that the 1/8th of the disk that they are able to clone before it stops working entirely contains the complete filesystem and all of the desired data?


Actually newer drives are significantly LESS tolerant than older drives. Decreasing bit density, etc.


May as well try to remove your own appendix with a grapefruit spoon. Sure someone might get lucky every once in a while, but what happens to all of the rest of the cases?

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

I'm very impressed that the OP has been able to get this far. It is clear that there is significant media damage to only have read 12% of the drive (non contiguous sectors), but it is certainly an accomplishment. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable declaring victory until I saw at least 90%, knowing that the unread sectors are scattered throughout.

I'm curious to know how much was put into this project. The cost of parts, tools and number of hours spent to get this far. I'm rooting for you, but I suspect that if you are splitting blocks after only reading 12% of the drive, you will be lucky to get the number up to 25%. That means that the end result is your data is lost. There is a small chance that a pro still might be able to salvage something, but the cost has likely doubled or tripled from what it would have cost in the first place.

Do let us know how you make out. I really would love to hear this as a success story.

Luke

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery