hard drive dead - lost 180+ gigs video

[jlietz]

Well the unthinkable has happened. My Western Digital 200 GB drive died at the young age of 7 months. The drive held the contents of about 80 vhs-c tapes. I had already captured, edited, and converted these home movies to mpeg-2. I was waiting for the price of DVD media to fall so that I could move them to more "permanent" storage. I guess I shouldn't have though!!! I have spent at least 100 hours of my spare time on this project. I have written a letter to Western Digital's chairman asking for them to attempt data recovery. Any chance of that happening? I guess no one really has to answer that, I just wanted to share my sob story.
Thanks for all the help through this point. I guess I'm just going to have to start over

[teegee420]

You have my most sincere and deepest sympathies. I've lost a disk or two myself. I've since tried to be as minimalistic as possible with regards to long term HD storage. Good luck to you.

[cchang]

Hi,

Same disaster happened to my 3 months old 80gb Western Digital drive. I lost 3500 scanned pictures and some videos. Tried and never recover anything after one week of effort. Now I only use Hitachi (IBM) drive to do the video and back up everthing to DVD.

cchang

[gll99]

Don't try to format or do anything or you will lose the data.
The information is still on the platter(s), you may have only lost a bit when the drive died and caused some corruption but a scandisk/chkdisk would solve that. Most of the data would still be recoverable. I read somewhere a while back when I searched the net on recovering data from lost hd drives, that someone took a new identical hd and put the platter from a dead drive into it and recovered the data to a third hd. Then put back the new platter(s) back into the new drive again. There are significant costs and risks involved but it sounds like it could be done. The new drive warranty would of course be invalidated but if it solves the problem it may be worth the cost.
You could try to find the article again doing a net search.
Any one else hear of this?

[jlietz]

Thanks for the sympathy I won't try to recover the data myself as I could not afford the expense, but I appreciate the effort.

[8trackkid]

Sorry to hear about your loss
If its worth it to you, there are professionals that will recover your lost data for a fee. They specialize in data recovery, and use cleanrooms and have the proper tools if you cannot do this on your own. Do a Google search for this and you should find plenty of companies. I know that 100+ hours of my time is definately worth the price paid to recover this data.
Please though, DONT try taking apart your HD yourself, like the last post replied. Dont think anyone would, way too much room for error.
Good luck...

[housepig]

check out SpinRite - might be a cost-effective solution.

[northcat_8]

It depends on how the drive died. If it just stopped working one day that is one thing. Could be a solder point went bad or came loose or something burned out. If it was clicking and clicking and then died that's something different.

If it was clicking and clicking then the physical disc area is probably damaged.

I lost a HD just a few months ago and thought I was going to lose my 60 GB western digital drive, it was clicking and would lose power. As soon as I noticed it I shut down the PC until I could get another HD and image the new drive using Norton Ghost 2003 from the 60 GB drive. I did that, booted to the new drive with the 60 GB western digital set to slave on the same IDE channel. I then ran defrag, scan disk the whole gambit on it but the problem still remained. So I figured it was going to die anyway, so I converted it to the NTFS file system using Partition Magic 7.0

I just wanted to try it because Microsoft said that you could convert a drive and it would still be OK, it would boot and everything...but you know how the advise of microsoft goes sometimes....anyway, long story short, I converted the drive to NTFS, changed it back to my master drive, it booted and I've been running off of it ever since with no problems at all.

I don't know what changed that fixed my disc, but it was my OS drive and it was a FAT32 file system, changing it to NTFS evidently did something to fix it, because it has been going strong for quite a while now...knock on wood.

Just a thought, maybe something for you to try before scrapping the whole thing. Your situation is a bit different though since you are not dealing with a OS drive, and your drive is probably already NTFS to hold that kind of video.

I have been where you are...it sucks...no doubt about it. When I lose one of my 80 GB maxtors that make up my stripe 0 RAID array I'll probably cry.

[gll99]

Try this link it's small and a bit over animated but it contains a download page link near the bottom where you will find a small zip file which contains a rich text documents with 200 tricks to recover a failed hard drive. Some involve so called dead drives that were frozen in plastic and later put back in the computer and worked long enough to strip the data off. I read it quickly but might be worth looking at.

http://www.cybcity.com/lgl2001/

[Roundabout]

jlietz,

Boy, do I feel your pain. A few months ago I lost the HD in my laptop and gone was 20GB of memories...pictures taken with my dig camera of a cross country trip, photos of my mom when she was in the hospital for cancer surgery, two years of my life gone. Also all my MP3 collection, wife's cross-stitch files, and mountains of saved e-mails with pictures of friends and whatnot. I called IBM (the mfgr of the drive) and they won't help, recovery costs a minimum of $500.00 and up to $2000.00 - something I can't afford to do. They claim no responsibility for the failure, though it was still in warranty and shouldn't have died. The guy at the recovery place I called said these type of drives fail almost always within a year to a year and a half. Nice to know that now, after it's too late!

If I'd known the drive was gonna go south on me, I certainly would've backed up everything. I tried every software and hardware recovery option I could find. I bought an adaptor and hooked the drive up to my Desktop and tried to copy files over. No dice, though I could see some folders, when I tried to access them, the drive started making mechanical "shoop - shoop" noises. Then it wouldn't do anything else till I powered it off and on again, then the same story. Once in a while I could even get inside a folder, but if I tried to drag and drop a file, it'd lock up again. I finally gave up.

Can you access anything at all? Does the drive spin up, but you just can't see any folders or directories? What exactly does it do or not do?

I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I am making a trip to Ukraine in the next couple of months, and I'm taking my drive to a professional recovery shop in Kiev - they charge a fraction of the price to do recovery. I might be able to take your drive with me, if you want, and could see if it can be recovered there. I don't know the exact cost, but I know it's far less than would be charged here, because the people there can't afford the kind of prices they charge here, and they'd be out of business if they tried to charge that much. My wife is from there, so she can talk to them and negotiate whatever is necessary to ensure we don't pay too much. Sometimes they'll even do it much cheaper if they know and like you. If you're interested, let me know. If it is stuff you can make again, it's one issue, but if it's irreplacable data like mine, I have no choice.

It seems the only way for me to go. Lesson learned - back up everything you can, when you can. You never know what can happen...

[lordsmurf]

ONTRACK EASY RECOVERY PRO... I use this a lot on failed drives.

If you do ANYTHING to the drive, (running Scandisk was the WORST POSSIBLE ADVICE I saw in this thread), you will 100% guaranteed obliterate your data.

You are NOT allowed to touch it in any way, shape or function. Just hope the BIOS still sees it, and you will be fine.

I had a 60GB disc crash some time back, recovered 98% of the data using this software and not doing something stupid (like Scandisk, Norton, freezing the drive, etc).

Just be aware this program is expensive. I may be able to provide my services, but it takes time and I would need another drive of equal or greater size. I would suggest professional service, as it is QUITE time consuming to recover data (almost more than I have). Plus software and services are not cheap. About $100 per hour or $500 flat at most places.

It all depends on what happened and how the drive is damaged.

[grossjamesh]

It a terrible thing to lose a HD. But you should follow the axiom -
Backup often.
With HD being so cheap you can have a spare HD dedicated to a Norton Ghost Image. Then you will never lose that data again.

In the mean time dont do anything to the failed drive. Send it to a data recovery outfit. Most have very reasonable prices.
In most cases there is nothing that you can do that will recover the data - you can only damage it more.

[gll99]

Smurf
The scandisk option was in reference to a platter swap. You cannot scandisk a drive when there is power loss which is likely the problem with this drive. No disk writes should be attempted of any kind in its current condition.

[au7usa]

This is either a huge coincedence, or a conspiracy! I just lost a Western Digital hard drive too. I think WD is sending self-destruct signals over the internet, so we have to buy the new models.

Anyway i pulled the drive out and gave it a severe beating. (It made me feel better!)

[tommyoz]

ONTRACK EASY RECOVERY PRO... I use this a lot on failed drives.

This is what I have used also. It has never failed me.

jlietz, What have you tried so far? I think it's worth the effort to try and recover instead of having to do it all over again. At this point you have nothing to lose.

[northcat_8]

au7usa -

I agree. I just don't think WD drives measure up to Maxtor drives. Hell I even have an old Quantum Fireball...4 GB that was big at the time...don't laugh...I installed it and loaded XP on it so I could research the internet while I was having problems with my other 2 drives.

The drive I did lose was a 10 GB western digital that I used pretty much like a floppy, so it wasn't like it had heavy read/write activity on it daily.

[Moloko_Plus]

I feel Terrible for you, bro. Sorry to hear your drive died. I wish there was something i could say or do to make you feel better and bring all your hard work back, but there isn't.

Ill make it a note to Never buy a "western digital" hardrive. The one I have now is a 120 gb maxtor. Its been around for almost a year or so.

Once again, I hope you solve your problem and get everything back to the way it was.

[Nelson37]

Much depends on what happened to the drive, but -

No chance WD will do any data recovery for free. You should, however, get a new drive under warranty. While a data recovery service is best, I assume you don't want to spend $500-$1000 or more. If the new drive is identical to the old one, it is relatively simple to carefully remove the board from the underside of the drive and swap them. This will not damage the board or drive in any way, is undetectable if done carefully, and may make the old drive usable. You'll need some DVD's as the new drive won't work with the bad board. Swap them back and keep the new drive when you're done.

[lordsmurf]

Maxtor is often referred to as "leftover Western Digital" and there are some mild claims that could support that. Saw them a year or so ago. They are owned by the same company, likely sharing parts on drives. Anyhow, WD is probably one of the best, followed by SEAGATE (bought out QUANTUM TECH). Then your bargain bins are lined with MAXTOR and others.

All drives die in time. How long is the ONLY question. Magnetic media have a lifespan. Backup often. On optical media, not tape. And keep it in a safe and properly acclimated environment. If it is important, do redundant backups per session and save multiple time frames.

In the meantime, look at the software I named or prepare to use a service.

And good luck. LOTS OF GOOD LUCK TO YOU!

[gmatov]

Wierd thread.

WD is not as good as Maxtor, but Max bought WD, makes many of them.

Ancient Quantum is WD, not Max.

All mfgs. make some devices that will fail before others, or the average. That IS what MTBF means. "Mean Time Before Failure", half, the "MEAN", will fail before the stated life, half will run after that time.

Ball bearings, jet engines, automobiles, microwaves, whatever, all have MTBF .

Why should a mechanical device, a HDD be any different?

Cheers,

George

[au7usa]

Back when i bough my first hard drive everyone told me to buy Western Digital, but the store was sold out of them. I had to settle for a Maxtor.

Even though it's slow as hell, THE THING IS STILL WORKING, WITH NO ERRORS!

I'll never again buy anything but Maxtor!

[MrMungus]

I wish I could help but I can't.

But your thread is interesting...I just got a new computer and I had an old 40 and a 120 and today I had to reinstall the OS (don't ask) and I was really glad I had the OS on a drive separate from my capture drive. So I *was* thinking about getting a 250GB drive but now I'm thinking, "Hmm...maybe a few smaller *cheaper* drives would be better than one big one..."

[Zal42]

I read somewhere a while back when I searched the net on recovering data from lost hd drives, that someone took a new identical hd and put the platter from a dead drive into it and recovered the data to a third hd. Then put back the new platter(s) back into the new drive again. There are significant costs and risks involved but it sounds like it could be done.

Unless the person who did this had access to an industrial clean room, then this story is certainly false. Even microscopic dust particles will render the platter unuseable, and trying to use contaminated platters like that will lead to a(nother) head crash.

[Nelson37]

Opening a drive case successfully is certainly possible, though unlikely. I have witnessed a drive being kick-started by opening the case and using a finger on the edges of the platters. On an ordinary tech bench, and not a particularly clean one at that. Drive booted and ran for 10-20 minutes. I only saw it once but it was reported to have been running this way for weeks, and to run for hours on end. I would certainly not recommend this except as a last resort.

Changing the power cable and then ribbon cable, after removal and re-insertion, would be first thing to try. If its powering up with no head movement, a good hard slam on a flat surface is worth a shot before sending it back or throwing it in the trash - do this AFTER the board swap mentioned above, if you try it.

[You_Are_Alive]

I think its wrong for people to jump to conclusions about the WD drives being worst than Maxtor. Its simply not true. I had a HD die on me as well, remember the IBM "deathstar" series. I had the deskstar 40 gig. It clicked and clunked away, but I was able to recover all the data back by taking it out of my box and putting it into my external enclosure box. Little by little, I transferred all the data I needed. But I don't take the negative attitude that now IBM drives suck. Although for this particular drive, it was proven to be designed poorly. That's why the law suits, remember.

IMO, Seagate Cheetah 10K rpm are the best drives I have. I got 5 of them. And they've been put to work alot longer than any other IDE drive that I have now, about 5 years now. My next choice in reliablity, would also be a WD over any maxtor too. The maxtors are just so cheap to buy, I bought 2 myself. Needless to say, I will backup my stuff soon after the 1 year mark, just in case.

Oh, and the ideas about buying another identical drive to swap components is NOT that hard to believe. I'm a member at another forum where this has been done and written about a couple of times because it was critical data. Its not for the faint of heart, but its been done. I don't believe that no one else can do it except for a special lab. BS. Like its already been suggested, there are still a number of ways to extract your data, with software or with pure will and patience by taking as much as you can little by little. Feel free to try an enclosure, like I have, it may work for only minutes at a time, but maybe, thats all you need.

[gll99]

Zal42

Unless the person who did this had access to an industrial clean room, then this story is certainly false.

I'm not in a position to prove or disprove what was said by a third party but the person on the forum seemed sincere to me and explained it well. I'm not suggesting that this was to be done as a first step but rather what one member had done as a last resort to recover their data. The previous reference is at least 2 years old and the one that follows is probably much much older quoted from the document I mentionned earlier "200 ways to revive a hard drive". These are testimonials by tech support personnel who often had to deal with near impossible situation and used what appears on the surface to be archaic methods. Here's one:

From: Ben Hardman

Lets see...
First, I would see if I could see the disk in the BIOS.
If the HD is visible in the bios, I would try something like fdisk/mbr.
I would view the partition info and see if it was showing the correct partition info.
Assuming all of that is correct, I would try running microscope diagnostics and see what kind of errors it is producing—whether it be a seek error or an actual damage to the drive.
I would first get another drive preferably the exact same model drive.
I would try and run Symantec Ghost on it and write a script file telling it to ignore bad sectors and continue copying anyway.
It may not be able to recover all files but this sometimes works. If that still did not work to recover the data portion of the drive...
I would probably take the new drive that I ordered and take the controller off of it and put it on the failing drive. Many HD situations is not actually a failure in the surface of the HD but in the controller failing due to the fact of the IC chips and many surface mount resistors and capacitors which many times are already failing somewhat before leaving the manufacturer.
They allow functionality for sometimes several years but you are tossing a coin with each boot of the machine.
But I digress, back to the controller... After switching controllers see if the drive is visible and the data is in tact. If that does not work verify the drive is spinning up.
If the drive is not spinning sometimes you can open the drive up and take a pencil eraser and give the platter a little push and the drive will spin up. Of course, this is a last resort option because you will void any warranty that is on the drive.
I have even gone as far as taking a bad drive whose drive head was bad and removed the platters and put them in a new drive's platters place.
I had to do this with a UNIX server once because the company had not backed up any data on its servers drive.

I see your point about polluting the platters and I do remember a warning about not smoking during this procedure but that's about it. I guess desperate people do desperate things.

I have personally saved all the data on my 20 gig fujitsu, 60% of my son in law's 8 gig fujitsu drive which would have been more but he messed with it. I also got a free 1.6 gig about 5 years ago when someone gave up on it. I restored the whole thing and only lost a few sectors. All from supposedly dead drives but all using various non invasive tricks and software.

To jlietz
I would never seriously recommend that you try anything that opens the case without the manufacturers written approval because your drive is under warranty. They would love for you to mess with it and invalidate the warranty. Unfortunately to get a replacement they will want your drive so they can test it but even if they get it going I doubt you will see your data from them.

I suggest that you try every method that doesn't break the seal to get at your info because most of it is still there and there is a high probability that it can be retrieved.

[offline]

When I was a lowly tech I recovered quite a few dead drives without a cleanroom and special equipment apart from a macroscope and GRC's Spinrite which I have used ever since the 1st WD copper platter.

How successful you can be depends on the type of damage.

Blown chips/board: >85%
V/COIL jammed: 40%
Head gouge on platter: 35%
RLL re-encode fail: <10 %
remagnitised: 0%

[vivisimonvi]

It's interesting to see the majority of dead drives are Western Digital drives. Or are these the drives most people just seem to have?

I've only had one drive die on me so far (a WD go figure), one day it started making continuous clicking sounds and my OS wouldn't even load up (kind of sad I bought another WD drive, cause I thought it would be easier sticking with the same brand).

I did the smart thing long ago and always keep backups (CD-R, DVD-R, and two external harddrives). External drives are getting cheaper these days.

[gll99]

jlietz
I must be asleep here, it just occured to me that the newer hard drives have self diagnostics that kick in when the drive senses that it is failing. My 20 gig Fujitsu gave me ample warning signs as I recall. I even heard the clunks after it finished writing, I just ignored them for a long time. Then it started locking up and on reboot the operating system would give me messages about backing my data and such. Now if only I could remember exactly.
Did you have any signs of failure before it gave up.

[lordsmurf]

Or are these the drives most people just seem to have?

This is more likely.

Just like "NERO sucks" because "there are less RNM complaints" .. but it all comes down to more complaints because more NERO users.