Can I get data off a busted hard drive?

kuhlmeye

So, this weekend the in-laws were in town, and were nice enough to bring their borked laptop with them. Luckily I like them, so I decided to give a look to see if I could help. Quick info, it's a Dell, i5, 500gb SATA HDD. Here's the symptoms:

1. On boot up, we couldn't even make it past the BIOS loading screen. It got about half way though, and just hangs for eternity.
2. For the duration that the computer is powered on, the hard drive makes a scary high-pitched squeal about every 10 seconds, lasting for ~1 second.

My first thought was a hard drive failure. I opened up the laptop, took out the hard drive, and loaded up my trusty Ubuntu live USB, and was able to get past the BIOS and load up Ubuntu. Once in linux, I tried to plug in the HDD back into the bottom of the laptop with no success. I then put the HDD into my external enclosure, plugged it into my desktop with no avail. I also picked up a new SATA laptop hard drive to try and get the laptop back up and running, but that's not what I'm really worried about at this point.

My question: is there any way to save some of the data that was on the hard drive, or is it completely busted?

MushroomStick

How important is the data? Like is it worth spending several grand to get back?

If the answers are not very and no, then I've heard that sometimes you can bring a harddrive back to life - briefly - by freezing it. Not a permanent solution, but maybe enough to get a few photos off it or something.

Djeet

If it's making noticeable noises that is very bad and you'll likely need professional help. For DIY solutions I've had luck with PhotoRec for pulling off files. Though not with a drive making scary noises.

Bowen

If it makes any audible noises, no. Clicking and squealing, or smoke, are signs of destruction of data.

Obviously the NSA, CIA, and FBI with budgets in the millions can recover from it, still.

kuhlmeye

I think all they had on it was some pictures. Certainly not worth more than 100 bucks.

These are pretty much the answers I was expecting, but I wanted to be sure before I gave up. This can probably be closed now. Thanks for the answers!

fightinfilipino

if you're still reading the thread, there's an old trick to try with dying hard drives!

wait till the drive is at room temperature, stick the drive in a ziplock bag (maybe with some rice to keep away moisture), and then stick the hard drive bag in a freezer for at least an hour.

the theory is that if there are mechanical failures happening, the cold will cause the metal components inside to "shrink" (contract on a molecular level), hopefully allowing the read heads in the drive to work and the drive to function at least for a little while.

kuhlmeye

Well, I'll try it. Can't hurt it anymore than it already is!

Bowen

Yeah I'd just be worried that there's actually physical damage caused by the heads now. You might luck out though, give it a shot.

Effef

If its squealing either the motor is toast or the heads are impacting. Its completely junk.

Djeet

If it makes scary noises there is a mechanical failure. You will need pro help for that. Factor $100 diagnosis and $1K+ for retrieval. if you want to roll your own I highly recommend photorec for pulling specific filetypes (.jpgs for example). It's worked when live cd's or testdisk cannot do diddly to the partition table or mbr. 2nd time I've rec'd it here; not a shill. I've just had to deal with drive failure way more than your average user and don't have funds for pro intervention.

kuhlmeye

Only problem with software like that is when the drive is plugged in, it doesn't even mount or show up as a mountable drive. I don't even know how I would select it to recover any data. I'll try the freezer thing, but I don't really expect any results from it. I've already let the in-laws know they're pretty much out of luck, so they aren't expecting any miracles.

Bowen

If it doesn't mount than it's not recoverable. It hopefully should mount after this freeze method. Keep as much air out of the bag as you can so the water doesn't condense.

Djeet

when you plug the drive in via USB does it even say "you must initializae this drive"?

VoodooV

Had a drive die on us last week with plenty of audible clicks and clunks. Gave the bad news to the user, she informs me that she had no backup of her work files (sigh, we give you mobile internet and vpn access for a reason people). Stashed it in the cold server room for a week since management actually considered sending it to a data recovery service.

They ultimately decided against recovery so I fire the laptop back up to get the precise error so I could get warranty service. Viola drive boots up normally! I quickly copy off the files the user needed and I become the IT hero of the office.

I told the user that she got very....VERY lucky. The drive failed again later that day.

So there's your anecdote for the day.