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Data Recovery from Dead Drive

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by khalid rahaman

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I have a drive that is making a noise once power is applied to it, on the boot up screen the bios detects the drive, in the bios i am able to detect the drive, however when the post screen switches over the to OS startup screen the hard drive is no longer showing. The data on the drive is critical, i need to know how i can recover this drive, i tried a bunch of recovery utilities, none of them see the drive. Any and all help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

10 replies

by lordinfidel

Once the drive is undetecable by either Bios or by any OS's at even the most basic level.

Your only chance is to send the drive out for salvage. Essentially, you send the drive out to them and they take it appart in a clean room.

They take the platters and recover the data off of them.

If the drive is making noise like it is stuck, then the actuator arm is locked up. If you keep turning it on, you further increase the risk of damaging any data that is on the drive. Because if the arm is resting on a platter, or if it has a piece of dirt stuck in there. Every time it is powered up and the arm tries to move, it can scratch the platters.

2 companies stand out as leaders in this area,
www.ontrack.com and www.drivesavers.com

by khalid rahaman

Hi, thanks for replying, i figured i would need to send it out. Have you had any experience with either company, as i mentioned this data is absolutely critical and we don't mind paying whatever it takes to have it recovered. My concern is that if one company takes it apart and fails, will another be able to do anything better or is it just a dead end from there.

by hal 9000

An expensive process. If the data is all that critical why wasn't it backed up? But now the damage been done both of these companies will retrieve whatever data thay can as the platters may be damaged and the data or some of it may be unrecorable I'd chose the one closest to you and remember pack the drive and send it like it was a new one so put it in an antistatic bag and then pack it very well as you don't want any more damage done.

Also if the drive in under warrantie you can claim a replacment drive if you enclose documentation to the drive maker from the company who dismanalted the drive and for what reason it was dismantled. When you get the drive returned with the acomyping data all you need to do is place an RMA request with the drive maker and send in a copy of the documentation from the company who recovered the information a basic invoice will surfice in most cases but it is up to the indivual drive maker as to what they require. You will have to look it up on their website to find out what is required by them.

by lordinfidel

It really depended on cost and turnaround time.

Both are reputable and can generally get the data back for you. They both have a good sucess rate. It is actually quite easy to do, you only need the equipment and a clean room.

By a clean roomI mean that it is a temp controlled, filtered air, no debris type of clean room, where people wear pretty white suits. That is the main reason why it is expensive to do. It takes cash to maintain the facility.

by hal 9000

This is a time consuming process so don't expect the recovered data back the next day as depending on their current workload it may take anything from a few days to a few weeks for them to get around to actually looking at your drive and then dismalating it and recovering what data that they can from it. But if is as noisy as you claim then all the data may be lost and you will still have the expence of the effort to recover the data.

You will have to bear this in mind before you make your decission as to what you wish to do. But the one good thing to come out of this is that you now have the perfect example of instigating a solid backup procedure in the future.

by khalid rahaman

Thank you for the reply, what can i say about the backup, the moron who was working on it before me only had it backing up 1 of the 6 servers.

by clearsmashdrop

Dont you just love to inherit a nightmare? It is a common call where I work. An admin walks into the new job and calls me to find out the basics of our product. Then we discover together that it has been missing a drive for the last 6 months and nobody knew.

by hal 9000

Isn't life grand when you can walk into a mess like this? Once long ago when I still did Government and Medical work I got a simple repair to change a data drive that had failed I was informed that it was backed up daily and there was no problems just that the drive had failed. It took a few minutes to change the drive al of about 10 from memory and then partition and format it. I then grabed teh Backup tapes and started to run a restore program only to find that the backup tape was blank. No problem they did 3 backup daily so I just got another tape {after all it was always possible to get a faulty tape isn't it?} Anyway all 3 tapes from the previous day where blank so they had to bring in the off site tapes which where also blank. Now I would wear that I just may be possible for even I days backup to be faulty because of a bad drive but after trying 3 days worth I began to get suspecious and asked how they backed up the data. They where more than helpful it was the security's guard responsibility {what can I say it was a Government Department} and he knew nothing about computers so he was instructed to put in the tape press this button and then leave it alone as it would do the rest.

Well I started the backup process and watched as the tape ran for about 20 seconds and then turned off it seems that they had been regiously backing up 3 times a day for 6 months and not recording anything. Unfortantly the data on the drive was not recoverable either as they had run the drive until it was wrecked after a bit of noise didn't make any difference did it? It still worked but the read/write heads had been draging all across the platters surfaces for some time {long enough to total the drive and all it's data}.

Luckly that wasn't my problem.

by greatgazzoo

Sometimes the oldies work the best....Try booting to a dos type that will recognize the drive. IE Dos 6.22, windows 98 in dos mode etc. Linux. or as previously stated hook it up as a secondary drive. I have had good luck doing this with several systems in the past month....for clients.

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