Hard drive failure-Help save my stuff!

[Younggun]

Hmmm. Pretty large download.

Between my crappy service and hotspot usage limits probably better to borrow a disk.


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[Chirpy]

SOP for this at work is physically remove the drive, use some type of USB cradle to hook it up to another PC or Mac and you will probably be able to read the drive.

Macs seem to really do this well (and easy), it will probably mount your volume as read-only, but since that's what you want to do that shouldn't be a problem.

 

[orbitup]

Hmmm. Pretty large download.

Between my crappy service and hotspot usage limits probably better to borrow a disk.


Sent from my HAL 9000

I just got home. I've got Mint on a disc and Ubuntu on a thumb drive if you want to some over and try.

 

[Tcruse]

There are USB-to-SATA devices for this exact purpose, they usually work fine.
If you are not near someone that sells such, buy an "external case" for your drive. Even Best Buy will have them. Remove the drive insert in the case. Then you should be able to plug the drive into a USB slot on a Win 10 machine. If the drive is recognized, run chkdsk F: /R. (Change F: to what ever drive letter it is assigned). The /R will read the entire drive and assign new sectors to the sectors that have gone bad. The new sectors will have the "best available" version of the bad sector, worse case will be filled with nulls.
I have seen lots of such drives ruined by people attempting to use Linux machines to attempt to read the drives, especially modern drives and variable format sectors.
If all else fails there are data recover places that will fix the hardware and recover almost any drive. The down side is that the bill usually starts at $1500 and goes up.

 

[Davetex]

What round for bad hard drive?

 

[Mreed911]

SOP for this at work is physically remove the drive, use some type of USB cradle to hook it up to another PC or Mac and you will probably be able to read the drive.

Macs seem to really do this well (and easy), it will probably mount your volume as read-only, but since that's what you want to do that shouldn't be a problem.

There are USB-to-SATA devices for this exact purpose, they usually work fine.
If you are not near someone that sells such, buy an "external case" for your drive. Even Best Buy will have them. Remove the drive insert in the case.

You guys missed this part, I guess:

being a company owned computer I don't want to open it up

 

[mantawolf]

Can try to put it in the freezer long enuff to cool it, boot it and try to copy stuff to thumb drive before it warms up to much.

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[Mreed911]

Can try to put it in the freezer long enuff to cool it, boot it and try to copy stuff to thumb drive before it warms up to much.

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Condensation could cause serious problems for the motherboard, etc.

 

[mantawolf]

Agreed, but cooling the drive can cause it to shrink like male body parts in the cold. I wouldn't do it on a machine unless I had to recover something and other options failed.

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[Younggun]

These computers don't run cool, I doubt that will be an issue.


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[Brains]

You going to Hicksville? If so, bring it along and let me know - I'll bring tools.

 

[Younggun]

I appreciate the offer but I DO NOT OWN this computer, so it will not be getting opened up.

If I can get what I want using Lenox, great. If not, life will go on.


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[winchster]

You typically don't have to "open it up" to remove the hdd and put in a cradle. Not being argumentative just providing a bit of clarity.

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[WarHawk_AVG]

If the hardware is working and the OS is crapped out (aka won't boot windows) you CAN recover the data, get Ultimate Boot CD , use Universal USB Installer on a 64gb or larger pen drive (large pen drive is for recovery of data) boot UBCD, open directory, copy your user directory to the pen drive into a BACKUP folder...once done your data is safe (you can also poke around thru the drive in case you saved data in a non standard location)
if you have more data than what can fit on pendrive then backup to a portable 2.5" drive, or even a network location (this might take a while on 100Mb network)

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[Utah]

Your best hope is SpinRite -- https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

 

[stdreb27]

ETA: You want to minimize or if possible eliminate trying to write to the drive. You only want to read, to prevent any further damage that may be occurring due to failed sectors. Do not check the disk, try to repair the disk, etc.

THIS!^^^^^^^^^^

You can use a boot disk and an external hard drive to copy data to it.

Or

get a Hard drive dock. Then take the HD out get another computer and read the old hard drive as an external drive.

Whatever you do. Do not run check disk, repair or anything to they drive!


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[karlac]

Your best hope is SpinRite -- https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

Yep. Very useful software to have in your tool box for BSOD errors.
Have some 40 storage/system hard drives from various audio work stations and servers down through the years.
Have used SpinRite successfully a number of times to retrieve files, and to even maintain the integrity of some of those old drives.

 

[Younggun]

Got Mint running from CD now and transferring the first files to thumb drive.

So far it's working


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[Brains]

Got Mint running from CD now and transferring the first files to thumb drive.

So far it's working


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Awesome, hopefully you're able to copy off everything you need.

 

[Younggun]

I've got one folder that has most of my video clips and stuff in it. Not really all that important but I'll have to dig out the external HDD at the house or get a new one if I want to save it.

Overall, I'd say it's a good lesson I've learned about saving things on the computer instead of using a backup drive. Just glad I had the critical stuff on a thumb drive already. A lesson I learned in the past when a work computer would fail. (Fairly common considering they are always bouncing around in the truck)


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