kidhacker@nym.alias.net (:KidHacker NP-b54) wrote in
news:42700bad.6418797.qmail@nym.alias.net:
> On 27 Apr 2005 01:18:19 GMT, Muchacho del Tocino <muchacho@tocino.mxx>
> wrote:
>
>:>My two-year-old external hard drive has died. Almost everything I've
>:>downloaded from the groups over the past two years was on that drive.
>:>Some of my faves were on that drive. (Oh, boo-hoo!) Is there any
>:>discreet way to recover the data from a non-functioning drive, or
>:>should I just get out the hammer and start whacking it to pieces?
> [snippered]
>
> Yo MdT --
>
> Don't whack. At least not yet. There's some good advice here already,
> and all might *not* be lost.
>
> It's already been said that an external drive is simply a standard
> "internal" IDE drive that's mounted in a case with its own power
> supply and a USB or Firewire interface. The actual drive inside that
> case might be perfectly fine. If so, rescuing it might require a few
> tools and a little knowledge of computer guts, but it can be done.
>
> My first approach would be to power it up and listen to it, *very*
> closely. You should hear a faint whir as the platters spin up to
> speed, and a click or two as the head servos reset themselves to zero.
>
> If you (a) *do* hear such sounds, and not a squeeking or scratching
> noise (like a bad bearing), then the drive is most likely mechanically
> intact. If you (b) hear nothing at all, don't give up yet. If you hear
> (c) some sort of nasty noise from inside, then you might have a
> serious prob...
>
> In the case of a or b, the next step is to remove the cover and pull
> the drive out of the external case. Then you'd open your main computer
> case, (or that of some spare compuker you have laying around), and
> hook the drive up to *just* a power cable. It doesn't matter if it's
> hanging out of the side, it should just be propped up so it doesn't
> move around when it's running.
>
> This is a point, btw, where I have *no* idea whether you've ever been
> inside a computer or not. If you have, then this is pretty basic. If
> you haven't, then the only diff is that it might seem scary. If you
> haven't, be assured that none of this is "rocket science." It just
> requires a little guidance, which is available.
>
> Going on... you power up, and you listen for that whir. If you hear
> it, the platters are spinning up. (If not, then we get into some of
> the "last chance" methods Softee described.
>
> If this one is a yes, then you power down, and you find an unused IDE
> connector (i.e., like the 80 conductor ribbon cable that's plugged
> into the back of your main internal drive), and you plug it into the
> "suspect" drive, and you power up again.
>
> I'll make the rest of this a synopsis, because it's all dependent on
> your level of knowledge of computer guts. I don't want to go on for 6
> pages telling you things that you already know, but on the other hand,
> I wouldn't want to skip over something "assuming" you know about it
> when you don't. Feedback from you will determine how we approach it.
>
> Simplifying, what we're doing here is determining whether or not the
> drive is mechanically and electrically functioning. If no, it may be
> Softee time, or even hammer time. If yes, then we let the computer's
> BIOS try to identify it. This might involve some confusion on the part
> of the computer, and moving a jumper on the suspect drive, as
> required. (If it's jumpered as a "Master," and you hook it up to the
> same cable as your existing Master drive, the computer will be
> extremely unhappy and refuse to see either of 'em, and it'll try to
> make you think you've really phucked it up. Ignore it and turn it off.
> Simply unplugging the suspect drive will make it happy again.)
>
> If BIOS identifies it, then you *might* be able to read everything on
> it once you've booted into Windoze. If so, then you've proved that the
> drive and its contents are intact. If not, there are still ways.
>
> For now, I'll just offer an example, from my own experience. A few
> years ago, I had a 30 gig drive "fail." At that time, it was my
> biggest drive, and it had about 25 gigs of *very* important stuff on
> it, including some killer vids I'd been too lazy to burn to CDs, even
> though I *know* better.
>
> As it turned out, the power supply in the computer was failing. The
> drive was physically fine. With a new power supply, the drive was
> still "dead." BIOS knew what it was, but even DOS said it didn't
> exist. The partition table had been destroyed during some rad voltage
> fluctuations from the power supply. There was *no* way to access
> anything on it. I could "only" repartition it and start over.
>
> HAH!! I spent the best part of a week working with a forensics
> recovery proggy called "Lost and Found" (which I'll gladly post if we
> get to this point), and I recovered every single byte of everything
> that was on the drive. (I even saw, and *could've* recovered, an
> amazing amount of stuff that'd been long-since deleted and supposedly
> wiped.) Then I repartitioned it, formatted it, and started using it
> again. And I'm *still* using it.
>
> There's hope, MdT, but it'll take feedback from you, and some
> troubleshooting, to determine what went wrong, how bad it is, and what
> approach, if any, can salvage it. And, with little known as of now,
> the range can cover anything from fairly simple to hammer time.
>
> I'll help in any way I can. Just lemme know.
>
> Take care, and see ya.
>
> KH NP-b54
>
> "Artificial Intelligence will never be
> a match for natural stupidity."
> (Stolen)
Thanks for the advice, KH. Unfortunately, it's problem (c)... out of the
blue, the drive started making noise (a continuous squeak/click,
squeak/click), and the drive quit responding (i.e., Windows doesn't
recognize it). I let it sit for a couple days, then powered it back up,
and same noise and problem occured.
MdT
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