Hi all,

I've had this had this drive for three and half years. I use it externally with an USB adaptor.

Recently, I've been having a problem when I power it on. I can hear it spinning alright... no clicking or whirring noises. However, it takes a few minutes to be recognised by Windows and while I can see it on the explorer with the full details (name, size etc) and access the root directory, I cannot go any further. When I try to enter one of them, the system waits for a few minutes and then aborts. Also, I may get a CRC error. Checkdisk doesn't work- it hangs on for a minute or so and then closes.

I tried SeaTools for DOS. The short test failed. The long test uncovered about one hundred bad sectors, neither of which could be fixed.

I was thinking, could this be a PCB error? When I connect the drive to the motherboard, the BIOS recognises it, although I do get a "SMART bad, backup and replace warning".

At this point I would only like to get it operational enough so I can copy the data somewhere else. Is this possible at all?

Thanks,
Smooth

99% no.

Your next steps depend on what risks you want to take with that data...

I imagine not risking it means sending the drive to a pro

What should I do if I wanted to have a go at it?

If the data is unimportant and you want to take the risks of DIY recovery attempts with free or low-cost software, the usual next step would be to (attempt to) perform a raw clone of the failing drive onto a good (empty) drive of the same size or larger, preferably using a non-Windows OS, and appropriate software e.g. software which copes with unreadable sectors, offers different read algorithms, configurable retries and logging of progress to allow the cloning to be stopped & restarted, if problems occur. Search the forum for many, many discussions of the subject, along with stories of success, failure, and (avoidable) data loss due to human error (or bad luck) when attempting this...

Hello

If you're ok to risk the data by DIY,

Lot of chance that the disk goes worse or stop working completely !

First do a clone (sector by sector) of your disks to work on it, so you can try and have always the original, in case of something gone bad !

Then R studio to recover files from the image to another empty drive.

Good Luck

EDIT : Vulcan were faster than me

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Récupération de Données

use linux dd command to copy the data first. then try zero filling the drive. it may get you to a better situation.

If you don't care about the data then do as Vulcan suggests, clone with a non-windows sector cloner.

But as he says, you could quite easily kill the drive completely and lose your data for good doing this, but its your data so your choice.

AT THIS POINT it should be a straightforward (and therefore relatively inexpensive) job for a pro with the right equipment. PM me if you would like us to help you with this,

Good luck

Sean

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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