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Dealing with dying harddisk

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by bensonlo

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My drive is seagate 320GB with 2 partition - 100G and 200G.
I have tried to clone the whole harddisk to another new harddisk, 1st partition is recovery without problem, 2nd partition fail to clone.

Then I use partition sector by sector copy (easeus) to deal with 2nd partition, easeus hang in the middle (after 80GB) when a bunch of read error detected.
I think the first 80GB of 2nd partition is ok. I want to skip to middle of bad region and try to copy from 90GB (even I loss 10G, I want to save the remaining data).

1) Is there any software can copy particular segment of harddisk?
2) Can I split the 2nd partition into 3 more -
80G (good) + 10G (bad) + 110G (unknown), so I can combine and recovery in the new harddisk?

Thanks,
Benson

8 replies

by symon.l

I think the only way you will get around this problem is to partition the bad section off 79gb and upwards then try the run the backup again on the new parttion its going to be trial and error untill you get as much data as possible and its going to take some time.

by hal 9000

If so what's wrong with Slaving the Drive and coping all the data that you can off it?

There will be some that you loose but if it's just Data you don't need to Clone it.

It's also a great reason to use 2 different HDD's to prevent this from happening again and you'll be rewarded with a faster computer as well.

While you are at it it's an ideal time to start your DR plan and instigate a Full Backup procedure to prevent Data Loss the next time that you have a HDD go south for the summer.

Col

by bensonlo

> 1) Is there any software can copy particular segment of harddisk?
> 2) Can I split the 2nd partition into 3 more - 80G (good) + 10G (bad) + 110G (unknown), so I can combine and recovery in the new harddisk?

Anyone know is there any software can copy particular segment of harddisk?
e.g. copy from source sector number to target sector number.

If no, I may need investigate my method 2 more.

Thx.

by hal 9000

On Tracks Easy Recovery Pro should do the job on a working HDD but it's not cheap.

This is taken directly from On Tracks Web Site on when to consider using Software to recover Data

[i]When to Use Software
Depending on your data loss situation software is recommended only when your hardware or computer system is functioning properly. If your hardware or system appears to be physically failing or damaged Ontrack? Data Recovery services are recommended.[/i]

http://tinyurl.com/3bb2t2

Col

by bensonlo

I have tried some recovery software but my hard disk "disappear" once bad sector is read. So such recovery software fail.

I need to shutdown my PC and wait for a while then my dying hard drive can be seen by BIOS again.

I have not try "On Tracks Easy Recovery Pro", maybe I should...

Thanks!

by rb

I recently had to try and recover a customers data from a failing drive and I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the recovery software options out there but in the end I was successful.

I tried R-Studio, Migo Digital Rescue, Search and Recover, Recover My Files, and some freebies. The freebies didn't help at all but frankly they were too scary to use. R-Studio found a lot of files but when I tried to recover them they were all corrupt. Iolo Search and Recover is pretty but not powerful enough. Migo Digital Rescue did not have a demo so I bought it. It's super-fast but found nothing. Just to make myself feel better I used it on another bad drive though and it was able to recover a large number of files. I think it's probably a keeper for the customers that accidentally delete their My Documents folder then empty the Recycle Bin.

But back to my current problem. The customer got the XP blue screen and Dell support tried to talk them through a system restore, which failed, making my job that much more difficult. After trying all these programs I told my customer that his files were gone. But in one last attempt, I tried the Complete File Search in the Recover My Files program. Like R-Studio, it found a lot of files but they were mostly corrupt. So I spent some time reading the help and tried the Complete Format Recover which attempts to rebuild the partitions of a formatted drive. It also allows you to designate the sectors to search. Eureka... I recovered pretty much all the documents, photos, iTunes, etc. in perfect working order. It did take about 8 hours to run on a 149Gb drive but who cares. It worked.

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