Data Recovery / Hard Drive Diagnosis

I'll try to be specific here, but I don't want this post to be gigantic so I'll just say what I assume is relevant.

I had a secondary hard drive (D:, NTFS, WD1200) crash on me. I suspect it was a logical failure, as I haven't seen/heard anything to indicate the drive is mechanically broken, but I'm not an expert in this area so I don't know for sure. One day my comupter took ages to boot, and the drive showed up in Windows, and the system froze; after a restart the drive showed up again, but with no size/free space information. Later it didn't show up at all. CHKDSK seems to have exacerbated the problem, so I've just been skipping that entirely.

The drive usually shows up during the boot sequence. Windows sometimes recognizes it's there, and sometimes doesn't, but it's never accessible directly. I've tried a few data recovery programs, with varying success; some don't recognize it at all, others (R-Studio) have been able to extract a few files here and there, but here's where I have a problem.

I can only try recovering files for a little bit, maybe 10 minutes (including the lengthy boot sequence and Windows' startup) before the drive is no longer recognized at all, by any programs, or even by the boot sequence. After I wait a while, I can restart, find that the drive's recognized by the boot sequence once again, slowly recover a few files, then whatever recovery program I'm using ceases to recognize the drive once again.

My questions are: 1) Am I even possibly right about this being a logical failure, or does the stops-working-after-a-while symptom mean this is mechanical? 2) Am I irrevocably damaging something by trying to recover stuff in this way? 3) Would using a USB-to-IDE cable give me more versatility either way?

Thanks in advance.

 

So long as you don't hear any noises I think you should be fine. However if the software you're trying to run doesn't see the drive then the point is moot. If the drive detects in the bios then the problem is more likely to be a mechanical problem. With the absence of noises it could be something simple like stiction. (ie. heads stuck in park position) you could try giving the drive, while plugged in and powered, a firm knock. Sometimes this will jar the heads loose from the park position. IF it is stiction this will work. IF it's not then you could be causing more damage to the platters. If by chance you power up the drive and the software detects it and you manage to run the software, don't save the recovered data back to that drive. Depending on the software it may change the file structure just by scanning the drive. If your data's important take it to a data recovery professional. Most will provide a free diagnostic and quote. Otherwise feel free to experiment all you like. Good luck!

 

Personally, I've had better luck with data recovery on dying drives when the drive is connected to the motherboard vs. connecting thru a USB port. Have you tried the Western Digital diagnostic? I think it has a repair option built into the program. It's a free download at http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp Good luck!

hd2k

 

Thanks for the suggestions; I was just trying the USB option to see if I'd get any different results, which I haven't really. I did try the WD Data Lifeguard tool (or whatever it's called); it pretty much just fails immediately in trying to perform any operation other than an in-depth scan (and an in-depth scan just moves really, really slowly, then causes a blue screen crash whose error text I forget at the moment).

Point is, I've had more luck with other data recovery software, and none in particular with freezing the drive. Using a USB cable as I am right now, I'm still getting a brief period during which I can grab a few files - like, 3-5 minutes - and then the drive becomes inaccessible (the error message while I've been using the USB cable has been "semaphore timeout").

Thanks for the help regardless; I'm still trying a few things, but I'd love any additional suggestions from anyone.