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As the title says my hard drive is supposedly dying. Two days ago, I powered on my Windows laptop after a week of not using it. After being on it for an hour with no particular problems, I got a BSOD. The BSOD stopped at "Initializing disk for crash dump..." though, and the hard drive usage LED was off, so I decided to shut the laptop off by force. While powering it back on, Windows was really slow at starting up and I couldn't find the dump for the BSOD, obviously.

IIRC it BSOD'd again, and after that I decided to check the troubled drive on my desktop PC as a second HDD. After powering the PC, chkdsk started automatically and since I wasn't in front of the PC I didn't manage to skip it. It completed stages 1 and 2 in 5-10 minutes, then got really slow at 59%, during stage 3, when I decided to power the PC off supposing chkdsk could damage the drive further.

After turning the PC back on something strange happened: no drives were detected in the BIOS, not even the main one. One thing I noticed was that while it was powering on the BIOS was slower at detecting the drives then usual. This leads to my first question:

1) Is it normal for the BIOS to not detect any hard drives at all when one of them is damaged (to the point of not being detected), even though the main drive, the working one, is in a lower SATA port (if this has any relevance)?

After fiddling around with the cables and SATA ports while having the same results, I decide to connect my main drive only. It was detected and everything fine. Then I tried again with both and after a couple of starts with no detection as before, it worked and both were detected at start.

So I logged onto Windows and I desperately tried to copy files from the damaged drive. Accessing it and listing the folders and files took ages, it also froze and crashed explorer for some folders (showing I/O errors). Some files were copied while explorer was not responding. And the files weren't corrupted, but it's a tiny percentage of what I need.

I shut down the PC and removed the hard drive. It was really hot. I haven't touched it since. I thought I needed to understand the problem and decide how to move next. So, second question:

2) Does my hard drive have physical damage?

I must say it looks like it. The heat, the I/O errors, the fact that it doesn't always get detected... The drive is one year old, 500 GB, never had a hit or actual damage. It doesn't make any clicking noises and it sounds normal (I think). It has 3 partitions: System (C:), one with my data, and the Windows recovery one. File system is NTFS.

3) So what I thought of doing was to use ddrescue first, to get an image of the drive. If the image is too damaged I would try buying and using Spinrite, and if that fails I would go for a professional data recovery service. Is this the right way to go?

4) Should I try keeping the hard drive cool while it's working with the tools with some ice packs or fans?

5) What should the file system of the new hard drive, the one that will contain the recovered data, be? ExFAT?

For what concerns ddrescue, since I'm not too familiar with Linux, I had to figure out the right commands for my case. What I came up with was this:

fdisk -l

So let's say the system partition is /dev/sdb1 and data partition is /dev/sdb2, while the new empty drive is /dev/sda1. Then:

mkdir /mnt/recovery
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/recovery
mkdir /mnt/recovery/recovered
cd /mnt/recovery/recovered
ddrescue -d -v /dev/sdb1 sdb1.img sdb1.log
ddrescue -d -v /dev/sdb2 sdb2.img sdb2.log

6) What would you advise me to do if ddrescue gets really slow? What commands to invoke?

7) After getting an image of the drive what should I try mounting and how? That's the part of the ddrescue process I don't understand.

I hope my post is clear and readable enough. If you need more info, please ask. Thank you in advance.

dathpo
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  • FWIW: I've heard a thing, though I have not had a disk break recently enough to corroborate personally, that sometimes when a HDD fails, it's an issue with the circuit board which is screwed/glued to the bottom of the drive shell, rather than a mechanical failure. If your drive is so FUBAR that you can't POST it, maybe check if you can get a replacement circuit board cheaply and replace it by hand. The boards typically come off with 4 screws and unplugging the serial cable. If the board is indeed broke and the disk is good, you should have a happy drive. Research it for yourself if you wish. – Kivin Aug 05 '14 at 13:27
  • Yeah I kept that as an other solution. Are there any risks involved in doing this? – dathpo Aug 05 '14 at 13:39

1 Answers1

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Is it normal for the BIOS to not detect any hard drives at all when one of them is damaged (to the point of not being detected), even though the main drive, the working one, is in a lower SATA port (if this has any relevance)?

If the HDD isn't even getting through its POST procedure then this is indeed normal.

Does my hard drive have physical damage?

Based on the information you provided we can't answer this question. What you describe normally indicates the hardware isn't working within its own specifications. Take that statement for what its worth.

So what I thought of doing was to use ddrescue first, to get an image of the drive. If the image is too damaged I would try buying and using Spinrite, and if that fails I would go for a professional data recovery service. Is this the right way to go?

In order to do anything yourself you have to have a drive that is able to perform its start-up procedure and be detected by your system. Often is the case that at some point this isn't possible which leaves expensive data recovery options as your only option. You want to avoid getting to a point where the disk cannot even POST.

Should I try keeping the hard drive cool while it's working with the tools with some ice packs or fans?

Moisture and electronics don't work well together. Additionally heat isn't the issue.

What would you advise to do after that if it gets stuck?

A data recovery service if no other copies of the data exist.

After getting an image of the drive what should I try mounting and how? That's the part of the ddrescue process I don't understand.

The disk itself which isn't functioning with its specifications or the image of the disk? Stick with the image, the physical disk, cannot be trusted for actual storage at this point its beyond repair.

Ramhound
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  • Thanks for the reply. So a broken hard drive can prevent other working HDDs from being detected? That was my question. If that shouldn't be the case then my motherboard has a problem, because that is what is happening. My 6th question was ddrescue related. What commands should I invoke if it gets really slow? – dathpo Aug 05 '14 at 12:49
  • @David - A HDD that is unable to perform its power-up procedure can prevent a computer from booting. ddrescue is going to be slow no matter what considering your HDD is failing nothing can prevent that your likely looking at days to complete the procedure. Your motherboard is fine – Ramhound Aug 05 '14 at 12:52
  • OK thanks. So you advise me to go straight to a specialist without even trying ddrescue (would make things worse right?)? – dathpo Aug 05 '14 at 12:55
  • @David That depends on how valuable the data is. Given that the drive is having trouble POST-ing, or otherwise seems to have more than just bad sectors, I would say if the data is worth sending it to a professional service for, then send it to a professional service. There's no way to say if trying to ddrescue it will make it worse or not, but if the drive controller is being flaky (which it seems to be), then I would worry any time the drive is turned on because it could. If you look at the price of professional help, and can say "The data isn't worth that much to me", then I'd try ddrescue – Darth Android Aug 05 '14 at 13:47
  • Damn that's a tough challenge. Does the fact that it fails the POST mean that it could be the board? Is it worth replacing it in your opinion before anything else? Since they still sell the whole drive, worse comes to the worst I'll have a spare working 500 GB drive, if the board replacement doesn't solve anything. – dathpo Aug 05 '14 at 14:07
  • @David - We can't tell you what will or will not work. If you suspect the PCB which controls the drive, then provided you replace with an identical PCB with the same firmware, it might make a difference. – Ramhound Aug 05 '14 at 14:44
  • OK right, I decided to hand it over to a specialist in a couple of days. They'll tell me what the problem is, for free, give me the cost, and let me decide if to operate or not. Should I update the post when I'll have results? – dathpo Aug 05 '14 at 15:34
  • @David It is always appreciated that a proper answer be posted if possible. A self-answer is by all means welcome if you come up with a workable solution on your own. If you do post such an update, please post it as an answer, not buried in the comments somewhere. – user Aug 06 '14 at 07:39