Hello.

I have Toshiba MK3263GSXN that fell on floor with my laptop. After that system couldn't boot so I decided to move hard drive to other computer and try to copy data of it. Drive didn't make any strange sound so I decided to progress with data recovery. First I saw all files listed in explorer but they were not accessible for copy.

So I have looked over the internet and found MHDD, read a manual and few other tutorials.
I ran Scan command and there were a lot of bad blocks (UNC) in the first 30% of LBA. After 50% LBA there were only few more...
Total there were around 20000 UNC. Then I did mistake (I think) and run Scan with Remap to fix this bad sectors. It was working fine till 1% ob LBA and remaped around 1000 blocks. Then the drive started to send ABRT signal. From that point I couldn't get Scan runining again.

All I get from the drive is ABRT signal on every block.

Here are few SMART attributes:
Spin up time: 1646
Reallocated sectors count: 421
Reallocate event count: 185
Current pending sectors: 1626

Do you think I can repair this hard drive on my own using software or do I need to send it to professional. Is it possible I damaged heads? Or what do you think is wrong with it. Did I completely destroyed it by doing Scan in MHDD? Would like to know more about this error, so I know what cost to expect for repair.....

Thanks for any opinion.

It is important to understand how hard drives process read errors and perform other background tasks during normal operation.

Hard drives incorporate housekeeping routines into their firmware. These run in the background and are invisible to the end user. One standard routine is defect management, in which data in weak or failing sectors are moved to another region of the drive. The bad sectors are “marked out” and added to the grown defect list, also called the G-List.

Another housekeeping function is regularly updating the drive’s S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) logs.

These logs keep track of attributes of a drive’s performance: examples include the number of times the drive is started up, the inability to read sectors, and updates to error logs. These attributes are expressed in terms of “threshold exceeded” and “threshold not exceeded” values, which can provide an early warning of a drive’s impending failure.

Hard drives often fail in a cascading mode. For example, a drive’s head might become dirty and fail to read or write data. Good sectors will be reported as bad, and the drive will try to move the data to another sector (i.e., through reallocation). If it cannot successfully write to the new location and verify the written data, it will report the new sector as bad, too. Each time it moves an allegedly bad sector, it will update both the G-List and S.M.A.R.T. logs. The drive gets suffers a vicious cycle that interferes with imaging and eventually can lead to complete drive failure.

You're probably operating with a damaged head, and have now corrupted the drive's firmware.

_________________
http://www.datasaversllc.com

Thanks for info. Is this problem fixable by professional service? What is cost on average for this process?

Often data can be recovered in these situations. Sometimes the drive is made unrecoverable by running it a long time with a bad head. If you want the data recovered, you should stop working with it and send it to a pro. Recovery costs vary.

Mr_spokk is a respected pro on this forum, located in Sweden. I am sure he will be able to help you and provide a diagnosis as well as an estimate for the charges.

Good luck.

Jono

_________________
http://www.datasaversllc.com

That was such a gentlemanly post, Jono. Refreshing.

_________________
Sabo Computer Repairs & Data Recovery

Thanks!

Unfortunately you took a data recovery that would have been $300~$400 and turned it into a job that now will likely be closer to $1000. The only software that ever should be run on a drive that's experienced a head crash like that is ddrescue in linux to try and clone the data while avoiding the bad sectors. Any utilities to "fix" hard drives with bad sectors are data destructive and most often will kill the drive's read write heads in the process.

The time to ask for advice would have been before you ran all that stuff on the drive.

_________________
Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

Damn. If nothing else, I have learned a lot in this process
One more question... What are symptoms of damaged head? I read that if there is a lot more of bad sectors that I had....