Can I fix a crashed hard drive?
- Thread starter DanCPA
- Start date
If it is a "Hardware" crash, i.e. the hard drive heads touched the spinning platters, then you have to send it to one of the companies that would take apart the drive, carefully remove the platters and put them in a working drive. They would then try to recover as much of the data off the drive as possible and would send you CDs or DVDs with the recovered data on it. But, this is expensive, from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars.
If it is a "Software" crash, i.e. just a bunch of bad sectors with no physical damage, then you could use a program called "Spinrite" from www.grc.com. It is $89. My friend used it to recover a drive for his coworker and it worked.
Hope this helps.
Incidently.
Data recovery services are NOT cheap.
Data recovery services are NOT cheap.
Yep - it depends on the nature of the failure. Drives that are still mechanically sound but have data corruption of some kind (e.g scrambled file allocation tables) can sometime be resurrected with repair utilities like the one listed above. Ones with mechanical damage to the drive platters or a fault with the control circuitry are usually a job for a data recovery company, which will cost you plenty. There are techniques that involve cooling drives to below freezing to coax them temporarily back to life (if the drive motor or bearings are going west) that have been known to work, but they are definitely 'use at your own risk'.
GM
GM
Usually the hard drive is smoking or makes loud noises with the "Hardware" problem.
Usually the hard drive sounds normal but files are corrupted or the OS won't load with the "Software" problem.
It's not worth your time to try to coax files off the drive. Just restore from your backup.
Hah! Something tells me in this instance that doesn't exist...
I had a drive failure in my iBook about a month outside of warranty. Warning signs were increased load times and it started making a mechanical "clonking" sound during these load times. I did a search and found this was likely a bearing failure. I promptly backed my stuff up to CD; within a day or two the system wouldn't boot any more.
I did manage to get a final few files off it by booting from CD and manually mounting it, but this was a fluke. When I sent it for repair I requested the old disk as well and tried putting it in an external enclosure, but that was the end; it was unmountable, so I took a hammer to it and smashed it to bits for "data security reasons."
If the drive is at all accessible, try booting with some kind of recovery CD; it's possible the OS parts of the disk are problematic (I'm assuming it's your primary boot device), but you may be able to access it if you have some other means of booting the computer.
If you didn't have a backup policy before, this should spur you to make one. Even if it's just a CD-ROM burn every month, it's better than nothing. I have two 300GB disks in a two-disk enclosure that does hardware RAID and have them configured as a mirror. I've put all our photos and music files on there and it's plugged into my Airport and configured as an airdisk. At least once a month I try to remember to do a backup of my email and any new photos my wife has taken. Gives me some piece of mind.
Here's an odd one. I have an old 30GB Seagate drive that got killed in a power spike that friend numerous components in and old PC. I don't think the platters are damaged, but if you try to plug the drive's power cable into a PC, the PC won't even turn on, which seems like it must be some fried circuitry.
The only reason I kept the drive was that one folder of photos on it appears to have no backup.
The only reason I kept the drive was that one folder of photos on it appears to have no backup.
It's very possible that the only damage is to the MBR, the master boot record, and 99% of the drive is fine. Put in your Windows disk to boot, and run the recovery console and /fixmbr and you should be bootable.
You may still lose the odd file but most of your stuff will be there.
If the crash happened because of the hard drive, then get a new hard drive. Keep the old one temporarlily as a secondary and take what files you can once your system is running.
You may still lose the odd file but most of your stuff will be there.
If the crash happened because of the hard drive, then get a new hard drive. Keep the old one temporarlily as a secondary and take what files you can once your system is running.
it doesn't make any noise
Actually, I did have a back up policy, and I do keep most of what is important backed up... but I can't find the back up CD I made
And there are some naked pics of an ex gf I wouldn't mind finding again
So, I should slave the broken drive and boot it off of the new one I set up and see if that turns on?
That suggests that it may not be a hardware failure. Unless, of course it makes no noise at all--i.e. it doesn't even spin up when the computer turns on.
On a couple of occasions, I've had a drive that I thought failed or was failing, but it turned out to be a loose connection in the molex power connector. On another occasion, the problem was with the ATA controller on the motherboard. It may be worth the time to simply swap cables and see if it works again. That's probably not the problem, but it's easy enough to check.
I had a bad power supply a couple years ago, I would come home and the computer would have shut itself off. The psu had then cooled and the capacitors discharged, when I turned it on it would try to boot.
But losing power, the hard drive kept corrupting. If the MBR was corrupted, it wouldn't boot, and I also wouldn't be able to do a repair instal, Windows Setup would insist it had to format the disk.
I keep backups, but only every week and if I can save the photos and films I made in between I'm happier...
Boot from the Windows CD and watch the dialogue, it will say "For Recovery Console Press R" so do that. Then /fixmbr. Other commands for the Recovery Console are in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
Once the Master Boot Record is repaired, usually the drive will boot, or at least a repair instal is possible without wiping all your data.
If you have a second drive available, or you are going to buy a new one anyway, then instal Windows to the new drive. The second drive "should" be visable with all your files. If not, then drive really did fail and you'll have to send it to a shop to get the pictures of your ex back.
I keep hard copies of pictures of all my ex's in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet in my workshop, away from the prying eyes of the kids who think it's all boring tax stuff in there. Some of them were ex strippers, one worked as a dominatrix....
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