Excuse the Monty Python reference. First time posting here. Thanks in advance for your patience.

i have an almost dead drive. SMART has tripped. Drive still spins up, but doesn't mount. SeaTools for DOS won't repair sectors. Upon Win bootup, I get the warning from BIOS that says something like "Get the data off this drive soon, yo, or you won't have no data!"

This came out of a NAS Drive that was part of the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, as part of an XRAID. I had 2 drives fail at one time - within a day of each other. One without warning, the other was a steady SMART error decline. I was ready for one, but when both went, I was hosed. I have 4 months of unbacked up family photos on the raid. The other 10 years are backed up, but I want to try to retrieve those photos.

Netgear tech support can rebuild the RAID if I can clone the drive (or both damaged drives, though the other one is clicking and can't been seen with SeaTools).

What steps and tools should I take to clone this drive before it is completely dead? I'm ready and willing to do all the research and work I need, but I would surely appreciate some of the experts getting me started.

Drive has a clean new drive waiting for transfer. I have a dedicated WinXP machine to use to work on the drive.

I'm not a HD Expert, but stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night, and I have my big girl panties on, so let's do this.

If you're prepared to accept the consequences of DIY then try and clone with a non-windows based sector cloner, such as Media Tools Pro or dd_rescue.

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I'm ready to accept the consequences, which I assume are the possibility of death and dismemberment (of the hard drive).

Anyone have opinions on pros and cons of the two suggested cloners?

Is the media itself failing, or are the heads failing, or is it too hard to tell with what little I've been able to tell you?

Thanks!

Try to clone the drive to uncompressed image or pysical drive. RStudio (demo), DMDE, Linux DD, are free. If clonig is going slow, stop it.

The other drive (not recognised) should be investigated from diagnostic interface. It might be easier cloning from this one, assuming it suffers infamous Seagate firmware bug. It died without warning, it is an indication. If so, chances are strong it would bring all data back just in few seconds. Setup diagnostic terminal and will see power on messages on the screen.

What do you mean a "diagnostic interface"? Drive 3 does give "power on" messages. Drive 4 does not.

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I've got a Knoppix CD running and am ready to use dd_rescue to clone the drive and work with the errors. However, the drive is not visible in knoppix to mount (at least, I don't think it was - the drive is in the freezer at the moment).

If I can't see it, how can I mount it? It does give power-up options in a Windows PC upon startup noting that it has SMART errors and needs to be replicated immediately.

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I'm too new for a sig. Gloat away.

Oh, no! another troll to satisfy Pro's expectations...

Hi, on your Seagate 7200.11 ST3750330AS, what firmware does it have? I bet $10 for firmware issue
And put it in your freezer won't help to much...other than to degree it....both in temperature and health

Cheers
Bosse

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Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
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Well, evidently I need to get it out of the freezer so hang on.... 8DA1 is the firmware.

After further reading, I'm thinking I need to use DMDE. Does that seem to be more appropriate in this case since I cannot see the drive?


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I think you misread should say SD1A, and that firmware "should" be stable (damn there goes my $10), but everything is possible though.
Anyhow when you put the drive directly into the computer and start it up, does it recognize at all in bios now, and if so does it recognize it with the right size, model and so?

Bosse

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Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
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Yes, you are correct typo'd the firmware. SD1A.

Message I get on bootup is "IDE Channel 2 Master Hard Disk SMART Status Bad. Warning: Immediate [sic] back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent."

Yes in BIOS it reports 1GB,
CYLINDER 65535
HEAD 16
LANDING ZONE 65534
SECTOR 255

Okey, but does it in bios says something like ST3750330AS...or like 698Gb?
If it says 1Gb then things are not good...and you should contact a pro to get your data off that drive.
But if your bios sees it with the right capacity, you should try to image the drive to a good one....you can use progs like Media Tools Pro.

Bosse

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

No, it says what I typed before:
Capacity: 1GB

Any other options besides spending $1000 to get the data off by a pro?

No afraid not, this one is beyond DIY.
And as there are two drives with problem coming from a Raid, don't expect it to be a easy job.

Where in the states are you living? There are many high valued members here from various sites in US.

Bosse

_________________
Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

I think you found one - put it in the feezer, while nobody advised that. What diagnostic messages you get out of freezer?

@smportis,

Since you have accepted the risks of DIY, I've got a hypothesis (which could be right or wrong, and hence needs further investigation), to explain some of the information you are supplying on this thread. I'm not promising that I'll make any progress, but if you can clarify some points, it's possible that things may become clearer.

Your description of what is shown in your BIOS, is unusual for moden PCs. I'm wondering if you have a relatively old PC, with a BIOS that pre-dates the modern convention to show the make & model of the attached disk drive(s). If you supplied a photo of your BIOS "disk setup" screen showing the 1GB capacity figure, with the not-quite-dead drive attached, that would help us to better understand what you are seeing.

If I'm correct that you have an old BIOS in that PC, I'm wondering if the BIOS displayed capacity of 1GB is also due to a BIOS limitation / miscalculation, and that your drive itself might be reporting the correct information. In that case, this 1GB reporting by the BIOS would be misleading the diagnosis.

So let's try a different way...

You said that you have already run SeaTools for DOS. I'm not asking you to perform any kind of test or repair (please don't!) but does that tool report the make / model / capacity of the drive? It's been a while since I ran that tool, but I thought it did display a list of the drives that it recognises - it must have recognised your drive in the past, for you to attempt to run a test on it, as you mentioned in your first posting.

Therefore, after attaching the not-quite-dead drive to the PC, can you supply a (readable, but not 20MP ) photo of the screen of SeaTools for DOS showing the list of recognised drives (and any other data that it gives e.g. capacity, serial number etc.), as well as a photo of the BIOS setup screen that I mentioned above?

Of course it's up to you whether you decide to supply the photos I've requested above or not, and doing that does carry risks (e.g. the drive could fail more catastrophically while you're gathering the info that I mentioned). As I said at the beginning, I'm just trying to find out of mis-reporting by an old BIOS is misleading that diagnosis, as the first step. Over to you.

P.S. You mentioned that the other drive is clicking. Therefore that one is likely beyond DIY cloning or repair, but not necessarily beyond recovery by a DR company (e.g. depending on the amount of any internal damage).

Vulcan - Hmmm, yes, you are right, it is an old bios of a PC I built about 4 years ago. ASUS. I'll try the photo of the bios and of the seatools. If I can't post a photo yet b/c of my newbie-ness, I'll type the results in.

SAJunky - I didn't try to do any diagnostics right out of the freezer. I did get the same bios message when I booted it to the old PC.

MrSpokk - I'm in Nashville, TN.

I'd much prefer the photos (downscaled to be a reasonable filesize), if at all possible.

You can attach a photo to a posting, even as a newbie (look for the button, near to the "submit" button). However if you instead upload them to a photo service / Dropbox etc and post a link, then from what I've seen before, that posting with a link is likely to be delayed for moderation, due to your newbie-ness, hence why attaching the photo itself is probably better.

Ok, here's bios photo and the SeaTools DOS info. Good news is that ST sees it at the proper size 750GB.

this is a Good ASUS (P5N32) MB btw

for this raid , you must get the other hdd working in order to clone and rebuild

for such seagate inside NAS, i guess maybe MAYBE easy to fix (but with proper tools n knowledge)

most probably the cause is Power issue (right?)

good luck

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