[time-nuts] OT: Disk Drive recovery.

[Dave Baxter]

For many "failed" hard drives, it's not a "hardware" failure at all, but
a very corrupted data surface, rendering even the drives own error
recovery useless, so the OS won't boot, or comes up in "an altered
state" or similar woe.

If the drive spin's up, and you can see it OK in the list of devices in
the machines BIOS, it could be recoverable, with Spinrite from grc.com.
No affiliations, other than a very satisfied user.

Depending on the exact problem and the size of the drive, ammount of
corruption etc, it can take minutes to days (weeks even) but if it is at
all recoverable, it will get it back.   Often, you dont need to get the
whole file back, as often it's the "slack space" that's bad, but it has
to be read by the drive and OS anyway before it'll let you have your
data!

It's only the software tool that many so call hard drive speciliasts use
first anyway.   Only if the drive does not show up correctly in the
BIOS, or it can't spin up correctly, is it then a job for the clean room
screwdriver types.  If it wont spin, or ID's wrong in the bios, you can
try swapping the electronics board with another drive of the same
make/model.  Often that will get you access to your data.

However, be aware that hard drives themselves often "boot" from a
special track (-1?) and if that gets corrupt, not even Spinrite will get
it back, as the drive's own CPU and OS won't be behaving correctly! 

Of course, depending on the ammount of work it has to do, and time
taken, it would be wise to migrate the recovered data to a new drive
(tested for defects with spinrite first of course.) 

As earlier, I'm just a *Very* satisfied user of that software, having
got me out of a hole several times with older hardware now.  With a bit
of background informaion (I used to rebuild hard drives for a past job!)
It's not free, but it's the mutt's nuts as it were.  If you use PC's for
anything significant (regardless of the OS) you should in my mind have
your own copy of this software.

You can even recover PVR (Freview, Sky box etc) disks too, and those
from iPods  ;-)   Once you've connected it to a PC somehow.   Even via a
USB/IDE adapter!   Spinrite doesnt care what data or OS is on the drive
needing work, it's a totaly self contained environment that itself boots
from a CD or flopy.

It works on floppies too, in fact any magnetic disk media.  DO NOT USE
IT though on Flash memory, that can be permanently dammaged by repeat
writes.

I've used it to recover a PC that when booted was a Blue Screen problem,
with errors relating to corrupted kernel files on the disk.  Everyone
else (even the so called profesionals) said a new drive was needed, and
reload the OS, loosing everything.  An overnight run of Spinrite later,
and the machine booted with everything present just as of old.  The so
called IT support co now have their own copy too!

Even if you have good backups etc, after reloding an OS, the time taken
to restore all the backups and application software is a major expence,
and it never comes back that way 100% as it was.  (I've done it too many
times!)

Go to grc.com, and read about it.  Dont just take my word, see what many
other people say about it.

Regards.

Dave G0WBX.




> -----Original Message-----
> Message: 9
> Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:39:52 -0500
> From: Justin Pinnix <justin at fuzzythinking.com>
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] OT: Wanted desperately - LS-120 disk drive
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> 	<time-nuts at febo.com>
> Message-ID:
> 	<e27ab1960912040739r2dbb5001s2bec2bd8ab0f5c40 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> The procedure you describe is useful for a retrieving data 
> from a drive where some files have been corrupted rendering 
> the system non-bootable. But NO operating system (not even 
> MacOS) can cure a drive that has suffered a complete hardware 
> failure.  It's just not possible.
> 
> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 9:13 AM, ALAN MELIA 
> <alan.melia at btinternet.com>wrote:
> 
> > Sorry Dave my mail irrelevant.....motto READ THE EMAIL PROPERLY !!
> > I though you were talking about a floppy sized HD!!
> > DOH
> > Alan G3NYK
> >
> >
> > --- On Fri, 4/12/09, David C. Partridge 
> > <david.partridge at dsl.pipex.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > From: David C. Partridge <david.partridge at dsl.pipex.com>
> > > Subject: [time-nuts] OT: Wanted desperately - LS-120 disk drive
> > > To: TekScopes at yahoogroups.com, 
> hp_agilent_equipment at yahoogroups.com,
> > "'Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement'" < 
> > time-nuts at febo.com>
> > > Date: Friday, 4 December, 2009, 13:42
> >  > Internal 3.5" LS-120 Superdisk floppy
> > > drive (ideally with black front, but
> > > ...).   I'm after one in the standard 3.5"
> > > floppy drive size, not laptop.
> > >
> > > The one in my main system just died :-(.  I have a lot of 
> stuff on 
> > > LS-120 disks, and while I can read them on a system in 
> another room 
> > > and network the files it is rather a PITA (plus it is 
> probably only 
> > > a matter of time until that one dies too).
> > >
> > > I will remove the dead one and look for any obvious problems, but 
> > > I'm not optimistic.
> > >
> > > I am in the UK not the USA by the way.
> > >
> > > Please respond off-list.
> > >
> > > Dave