hello all ,

i am new to physical data recovery , and liked to get started , and like most of u "GURUS' has stated to start with a disk imager , i bought the DDI4 .

i have one problem ,

whenever i connect a source drive " that clicks or ticks " and hit f11 on the drive detection screen , it keeps on ticking as i connected it directly to the system bios , and it keeps on BSY status and never comes ready !

i tried this process with about 12 different drives trying to exclude the dead head from the head assembly to image the data available to the good heads but all givving me the same result .

any help would be appriciated
thank you

You receive a HDD that knocks on powering, and without any other diagnostic steps you place directly on DDI and assume it will do all the work for you?

Its a nice idea, but unfortunately it is far from the reality.

All 12 drives you tried, all are your own drives for testing, or actual clients media? I highly recomend you do NOT use clients media for your own personal training, data is not expendable, especially when its not your own.

There are many different failures that can result in knocking of the heads, there are many situations where physical repairs is unavoidable, there are many situations where DDI will not work with a particular HDD. In most situations, there is ALWAYS some level of manual work or preparation prior to fitting your HDD to the DDI, which I think you are missing.

Start with one specific case you have and explain the symptoms and history, this is a much better way for you to better understand about DR.

I totally Agree with the prev. post, DDI will NEVER do whatever you HOPE or EXPECTED.

the only reason i see (myself case) is TIME SAVING and dealing with some damn cases which DDI does FASTER than any other tool

and sometimes TIME is $$$$$ specially when it comes to DB file with single damn bad sector on it.

good luck

_________________
Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

thank u all ,

so to recover clicking devices " as i experienced all day today" it should all pass firstly at some kind of physical prereparation
including at least a head assembly replacement in my cases which are broken heads

if the SA area head is ok , why can't the imager start the drive at least and exclude the other heads !

well , thank you very much for your answers

What makes you sure the SA head is good? Many drives will simply give up on detection of any 'gross defect' at one or more heads.

I think it should be made clear that there is no such thing as a one click solution, or a fully automated data recovery machine. in the same sense, DDI is only as powerful as its operator. If you have good understanding of how things work, DDI is powerful. If, as in your case, experience is (very) limited, DDI is not so powerful.

You have to assess the drive and deal with the physical issues prior to the imaging stage. Basically, in a simplistic way, there are 3 stages to data recovery:

Level 1 - Logical file system recover (recover deleted files or from corrupt file systems)
Level 2 - Drive imaging (get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive, working around media damage)
Level 3 - Physical drive repair (diagnose and temporarily fix the damaged drive so that it will detect for level 2 imaging)

If you were in a severe car accident, you would not expect a doctor to immediately take you to the recovery room where they nurse you back to good health. The first need to diagnose your injuries and perform the necessary surgery so that you can then start the process to healing.

But, you may be in rough enough shape that you might find yourself moving back and forth between surgery and recovery until they get things under control...or you die. Same thing with a hard drive, we could change the heads, mirror the drive, donor heads die, change the heads again, mirror more of the drive until the heads die and keep repeating until nothing more can be read from the drive.

So, at this stage in time, you need to find a trusted clean room where you can outsource the physical recoveries that you are not able to handle.

Good luck.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

thank you all ,especially lcoughey for the efforts ,

i know this is not a one click hdd problem resolver , i've read tons of threads on the internet before deciding to get such tool .

one point that wasn't clear to me , that if a hard drive clicks because one head in the head assembly is bad " not the SA area head" then an imager can ignore that head and image the data that is available for the other heads .

The whole "affair" is simple as ABC :

If drive CLICKS AT STARTUP , AKA "click of death" , DDI can DO NOTHING until you fix the drive.

If the drive CLICKS WHEN READING DATA OFF OF IT but inits normally, DDI CAN do something for you, BUT you have to know what to do (and ask the DDI politely )

This may include isolating bad heads . You may have to do some additional work in order to obtain what you want.

Is it ?