Hello and thank for any help you may have,

The Drive In Question:
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Western Digital - WD800UE - 2.5"
It spins perfectly with no odd noise's.
Cool normal temperature when left on for a while spinning.

Problem:
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Computer slowed (slow down took about 30 min to happen) - rebooted - did not restart saying disk had errors (grub choked on boot)
Connected to another PC as slave and copied file off but drive seemed to be full of bad sectors (really odd that it happened so FAST). No other indications of it failing - no noises, heat etc.

Hard drive seems to not be recognized by USB-IDE controller (although it initially was) but only now with my desktop onboard controller.

My Solution:
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Copying image of desired partition to fresh disk using "ddrescue". This operation is taking over a day as there are bad sectors everywhere - currently have 17gigs of the 40 gigs (a fat32 partition) copied with only 73megs missing (this missing data seems to be spread evenly over drive)

Suggestions?:
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Please let me know if you have any ideas what could be going on here!
I feel as this is not a head crash but perhaps head misalignment (not sure if that is possible) or even some type of firmware corruption.

Cheers and Thanks for all you help,

Michael

u need to check ATA register´s while was trying to get sectors, from this way u can build an algorithm to tried to get that bad sectors, but need to check u need the right tools to did that work and of course the knowledgment about to know wich kind of bad sectors are, what its caused by a weak head, by a media corruption, ?

Best Regards

Ok I will perform the test and post a reply - stay tuned.

Thanks for the help,

Michael

Ok so I can SCAN with MHDD and I got may X's all indicated that:
UNCR (Uncorrectable Error)

Unsure what this info give me?
What can I do now?

Thanks and Cheers,

Hello,

do the Xs show a regular pattern, or just seem to be stohasic?

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Hi Pepe,

They seem quite random in nature.

Thanks again,

Michael

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wow this MHDD tool is cool - now to master it
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could u post us here the screenshot of that pattern of UNC errors?

Best Regards