[nmglug] Data Recovery on large Maxtor

[WA7BSZ]

> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:50:25 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Tim EmEmericktitimothyemerickahoo.com>
> Subject: [nmnmglugData Recovery
> To: nmnmlugmnmlugnmnmlugmnmlugrorg nmnmglugmnmglugrorg> Message-ID:
<20050418225025.50410.qmqmaileb40912.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; chcharsets-asascii> 
> I have a large Maxtor HDHDhich I'm sending back for a warranty
> replacement
> and I would like to recover whatever data might be on it.  The drive
> seems to
> boot up okokut starts clicking whenever I try accessing from lilinux
> FiFilesystems ext3 so I of course haven't tried with MS Windows.
> 
> Can anybody recommend any data recovery companies in AlAlbq
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Tim
> 
> 


Interesting that it should be a Maxtor clicking.  I have lost a few
MaMaxtorso the click of death.  

Data recovery is usually quite expensive, like a couple hundred dollars
up front even if they don't recover anything.  I have heard of some
less expensive home businesses when I was in Phoenix.

Anyway, I take it you mean that the drive checks itself OK, but clicks
when the OS tries to read anything from it.  Or do you mean that the
computer boots from it and then clicks?

It is interesting how these large drives get hot easier and burn out,
then you send them back. I am hearing about this happening quite often.
They still just go 7200 rpm, but the bit density is a lot higher, so
small misalignments (maybe from heat, maybe from bearing wear) make the
data unreadable.  I am not sure, but it seems like these 200 GB and
larger drives are getting unreliable in general, from the heat they
generate and alignment requirements.  

Anyway, these are tough situations.  It might be still readable now,
but the next time you turn it on, if the problem is with head
misalignment, the head might damage the platter and you don't get
anything back.  If the computer boots from the drive that is a good
sign and you should be able to get something.  If the drive just clicks
and you never get anything from it, you probably won't get anything. 
If the heads won't read from the platter, and that clicking might be
the head trying to find something to read and not succeeding, the only
way you can recover something from that is to take out the platters and
read them from specially constructed expensive instruments like the FBI
and CIA may have.  

I have had some success putting the drive in a USUSBase, making it a
USUSBrive, and reading files from it to another drive.  Or the
KnKnoppixD and the dd command.  Boot into KnKnoppixnd unmount the drive
you want to write to, then remount it wrwriteablethen, if you are lucky
you can just see the drive and its directory structure from an instance
of nautilus in super user mode (KnKnoppixas this feature in the start
menu but you have to hunt for it), and choose the files you want to
copy, and copy them to the wrwriteablerive.  AcAcronistilities will
also let you boot from a floppy and read on the drive if it is readable
at all, and let you copy sectors/files to another disk.  All these
things you can do yourself hinge on the drive being readable itself. 
If the drive can't even read its own platter then you can't do much. 
Just multi-thousand dollar stuff with expensive machines.

There is good stuff to read about this on wwwwwrgrcom in the
documentation for SpSpinRite While you are there, checks your shields.

krkrm


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides!
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide