Hello!
I have a Lenovo laptop with this (SATA) harddrive in it. All of a sudden, the PC bluescreened and will not boot (into windows XP pro or Safemode). It says it is missing a critical DLL file and Windows will not start.

I bought a SATA USB HD enclosure and plugged it in. Windows recognizes the adapter and drive, but says it is not formatted (!!)

I looked around on this site a while and downloaded some utilities:

I tried HDDScan but it just reports some basic information about the drive.

I tried findandmount, but it just spins the drive for a long time and nothing happens (I tried intelligent scan and normal scan).

Is there a basic guide for how to start recovery on a SATA 2.5" drive? If it comes down to a mechanical failure, I don't mind trying to open it up.

I have to say it is not making any weird noises, clunking, scratching sounds, rattling, etc.


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My only other prior experience with this kind of thing was a drive that failed and would not boot. I believe it was a boot sector virus, I was never able to boot off of it, but I put it in an Ultrabay tray and it works fine as a 'data' drive. Windows recognized the drive and I was able to copy everything off of it with no problems. This time it is not going to be so easy.

Hello,

First of all, get your drive, move to one real PC, and plug it in to the SATA or better to IDE port with SATA->IDE converter.
Run MHDD (from boot CD), and scan the drive without reamp or erasedelays option.
If you see any error or group (> 10 in short area) of coloured block, stop the drive and yourselfat this point if your data is valuable!
If the scan can't find nothing interesting, you are faced with logical problems only.
In this case use switchmbr command to disable the MBR and hide the partitions from windows.
Than run any recovery program you want, and try to get back your data.

BUT AGAIN: IF Your drive have any phisical problem, better to seek for professional help, because you can't precisely diagnose the condition, and you can't recognise if your drive have only some minutes left....
If you go to far, your recovery price will be doubled or tripled in any lab...

Best Reagards,
Janos

Thank you NC!

I posted the above message from work. When I got home I hadn't seen your reply yet, but I had a proper PC with SATA support on the mobo and used that. The result was the same; the OS saw a HDD present, but claimed it was unformatted.

I did some reading and searching and found out about R-Studio. I installed that on the laptop and tried to scan the Hitachi drive with R-Studio.

It did not seem to be able to read anything at all:


Information System 12/22/2009 1:25:47 AM Scanning drive E: started
Error System 12/22/2009 1:25:54 AM Read disk E: at position 215040 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:25:57 AM Read disk E: at position 216064 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:01 AM Read disk E: at position 216576 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:04 AM Read disk E: at position 217600 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:08 AM Read disk E: at position 219136 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:11 AM Read disk E: at position 219648 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:15 AM Read disk E: at position 220160 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:18 AM Read disk E: at position 230912 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:22 AM Read disk E: at position 231424 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:25 AM Read disk E: at position 231936 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:33 AM Read disk E: at position 239616 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:36 AM Read disk E: at position 240128 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:40 AM Read disk E: at position 242176 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).
Error System 12/22/2009 1:26:43 AM Read disk E: at position 243200 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).


(etc.)


I will experiment with MHDD on the other PC but I think I most likely have a physical problem with the drive.

I have to admit, I don't have much prior experience with working on HDs specifically, but I am an EE and have access to a static-safe workstation in a clean room at work (and some fancy SMT rework equipment). I would really like to try to fix this and pull the data off myself somehow; I suppose I can order the same drive and do parts swapping if that would help.

Read this before start anything:

results-the-yourself-solutions-t11912.html?hilit=yourself%20solution

Keep this on mind, hdd is a special case because have very high level precisity and a lot of special technologi inside.
You never knows what easy looking step makes bigger problem...

Janos

I read it and understand the risks. Like I said I am just looking to learn something and accomplish something myself. Is there a way I can better determine what specifically has gone wrong with my drive?

Thanks

if i were to totally guess, being a laptop, I would say you jolted it at a bad moment, and the heads came lightly into contact with the platters, damaging those areas of the disk. some crap in there may be making things worse. you probably had not defraged the disk for a long time either (who does) so the files are scattered in small blocks over the platters. Some of these blocks are now unreadable, and therefore the files are corrupt.

Thats what went wrong. The amount of data recoverable depends on the exact damage, and how much worse your attempts make things in the meanwhile.

Hi Mediaman!
Shouldn't the accelerometer in the active drive protection ensure that the drive is not in an unsafe condition while being moved?

In order to get more accurate diagnostics, you will have to provide Terminal output.
If you won't be able to do that, take it to a pro or forget about your data and move on.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

Terminal output on Hitachi?

I don't know what that means but if you suggest something I can read to learn, I will do it. When you say 'terminal' do you mean hooking up a level converter to a chip on the board and connecting to it with a terminal program to read diagnostics?

Thanks

Never mind, I had Seagate in my mind.......
Sorry!

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

PS just to clarify; I did disable the HDD password on this drive.

Sorry I keep replying to my own posts. I don't see an 'edit' button.

Why is the laptop reporting that HAL.DLL is missing? If the drive were completely unable to be read from, wouldn't I be getting an error from the BIOS ('no OS found')?

Isn't it good news that Windows is trying to run?

Sorry I keep replying to my own posts. I don't see an 'edit' button.

Why is the laptop reporting that HAL.DLL is missing? If the drive were completely unable to be read from, wouldn't I be getting an error from the BIOS ('no OS found')?

Isn't it good news that Windows is trying to run?

apparently not. even it it was working, how good do you imagine those things are? they can only react in a certain time, and many rely on an external "watchdog" to trigger them. I would say a good knock accounts for 30% of the disks we fix.

I would be interested in hearing other opinions as to how the damage may have been caused on this drive (lots of damages sectors in roughly same area of disk).


As others mentioned, post a scan with MHDD (its free) and we will know a little more. Seeing the whole picture of unreadable/slow areas will help a good diagnosis.

I can successfully start a scan but the problem I am having is that I can't get the .log file off the desktop PC I am using. I burned the .iso image of MHDD to a CD and booted off that. However it just creates a RAMDisk an operates from that. None of the harddrives in the system actually 'mount' in a way that the OS (looks like Win98 in command line mode) can see them, so I get a .log file that I can't get off the PC. The system has no floppy drive. I was thinking I could redirect the stdio to the COM port but there is no real rs-232 on this computer either (just USB).

I saw that there is a version of MHDD that is on a 'Magic boot disk' which also includes USB Mass Storage support, so maybe I can save the logs to a USB thumb drive. If not, I will have to find a floppy drive and try that.

2:30AM here, will try again more tomorrow.

Thanks again to everyone who replied.

OK I salvaged a floppy drive from an old computer I had lying around so I can save log files from MHDD.

MHDD correctly identifies the HD as Hitachi HTS7220. I did an EIT and SMART ATT
and the drive responses appear valid. So I assume (perhaps hastily) a few things from this:

-PC/MOBO/Adapter/Cables are OK
-HD PCB is ok
-System area is OK (if SMART data is good)?

However, when scanning, the progress is VERY SLOW (I scanned a known good drive last night; it was a 150GB 3.5" SATA drive in the same desktop PC and the whole thing took just under 40 minutes) it runs into a bad block (unrecoverable error) every 3 to 5 blocks or so. MHDD recalculated the ETA every few seconds, and it varied between 14 and 24 hours. Because I didn't know if there was any physical damage I may have been making worse, I stopped the scan around at around 75000 (of 195,371,568). Hopefully this is enough data to make an educated guess at the root cause of the problem.


I am uploading the scan log as well as a .WAV file I made; I put a microphone RIGHT ON the HDD; so the sounds appear louder than they really are. In operation, there is only a very faint sound coming from the drive. What you hear is a few seconds from the middle of the abbreviated scan that I did; you can hear the heads rattle faintly every time a red 'x' (bad block) comes up on the MHDD scan.



PS: The board tells me .WAV files are not allowed. If anyone is interested, please let me know and I can change the file extension if that is permitted.

Thank you

If you continue using this drive you will kill all of your data.
It has a lot of bad sectors. Probably one of the heads is dead.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

I think the drive has a minor ~radial scratch that makes a sector unreadable on each track, that's why it is slow.
To be honest it is a job for a pro who can selectively read the drive head by head and skip damaged areas with special equipment.
U can try imaging in reverse direction, but I don't think that will produce satisfactory results...

pepe

_________________
Adatmentés - Data recovery

When I was experimenting with MHDD I scanned a (good) 150GB SATA drive I had. I noticed a pattern; the majority of blocks read at the fastest speed (<3mS ) , but every few blocks, it read at a slightly slower speed (<10ms). This pattern was repeated throughout the drive until the very end. This made me think that there was something physical about that (good) drive that just naturally causes some blocks to be returned a little slower. I was thinking maybe the delay comes from switching from one head to another. The 'checkerboard' pattern I got on the good drive (<3mS vs <10ms) was very similar to the pattern I got on the bad dive (good block vs 'x').
So it makes sense to me that one head may be bad on the (bad) drive.

My fear is that maybe the head crashed (contacted the platter surface) or fell apart (and is loose and rattling around in the drive, or is hanging on by the wires and can drag onto the surface). However, the drive doesn't make any weird sounds. With the platter spinning at speed, the air bearing should hold the head up off the surface, unless it's hanging sideways or something.

So if it is like HDSPecialist says, and I have a bad head (that maybe is scratching the platter surface) it might be a bad idea to sweep the heads over to the end of the drive and try a reverse scan; because I'll be ruining the surface wherever I put that head.

On the other hand, is it likely that I have a destructive head problem if everything sounds normal?

I hope this is OK but I .zipped the .wav file to upload in case anyone wants to hear it.