› ›
Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

[tech ques] recovering data from a failed hard drive

sparklesparkle Registered User regular
in Help / Advice Forum
So I have a 500 gig WD hard drive that just recently failed. It still spins, and its still recognized by the BIOS, but when I try to boot up the computer with it normally, it causes Windows to take forever to boot. And if it does boot, windows doesn't recognize it. So through much hardship, I finally got a USB DOS boot drive working and I can see the hard drive with Fdisk. So the question is, how do I transfer the data on it to my recently purchased 2 TB drive? Is there a DOS program that can help me transfer the files or repair the discs, even though DOS can't see the whole disc because they are both too large for DOS?

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197993212947
• Agree Awesome

Posts

  • DjeetDjeet Registered User regular
    Photo-rec is the only decent free file recovery app I know of. If it is a matter of MBR or partition table repair there are other utilities.

    • Agree Awesome
  • zepherinzepherin Registered User regular
    I've used a program called spinrite with great success, but it is not free unless you are a filthy pirate, however it is a fabulous tool.

    • Agree Awesome
  • DjeetDjeet Registered User regular
    spinrite is pretty great too. be aware, anything worthwhile will take a fuckoff long time to run, like days.

    • Agree Awesome
  • zepherinzepherin Registered User regular
    Yeah bit by bit reconstruction and repair takes forever.

    • Agree Awesome
  • StraygatsbyStraygatsby Registered User regular
    Use pendrive(sp?) to load an ubuntu install onto a flash drive. Boot your PC to ubuntu using this drive and, if you're lucky, it'll detect and mount your ailing hard disk. Grab everything you can and put it on an external of some kind. Then you can relax a bit and focus on A) nuking from orbit or B) rebuilding.

    Straygatsby on
    Esseethatassemblyguy
    • 2Agree Awesome
  • LuianeLuiane Registered User regular
    A note that should be made, I think (although you probably already know this) is that once a hard drive has failed, no matter if you get it running again, it is best to assume it is dead and get yourself a new one.

    Steam id: Varys
    LoL EU West nickname: Irridan
    Essee
    • 1Agree Awesome
  • thatassemblyguythatassemblyguy Registered User regular
    I wouldn't suggest spinrite. It's not for recovering data from a failed drive because it writes all of the data back to the same drive but in a different sector that may or may not be good. On top of that, it uses too many strokes to read a bad sector that it encounters which will likely propagate any mechanical defects of the drive.

    Definitely try mounting the drive under a live-boot of linux, as Straygatsby said, and use dd to attempt to copy the contents of the old disk to the new one.

    • Agree Awesome
  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    Honestly it sounds like a MBR or Partition error. If it still spins up and reads mostly it should be pretty easy to get your stuff. Ubuntu would be your friend as stated above.

    • Agree Awesome
Sign In or Register to comment.
› ›