Hard Disk Recovery

Hard Disk Recovery

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A week last Friday (always on a Friday) my new (May 2001) 10Gig Fujitsu hard disk made an "unusual" scuffing noise and I got one of those white STOP or CONTINUE panels on screen. I was then informed that "something .exe had caused an error in my Sinf file. This program will now close"
I rebooted only to find that my hard disk had died, The system did not recognise that it was even there and asked me to boot from the CD Rom with the Instruction: Boot Failure - Insert system Disk in CD-Rom Drive and press enter."
I did this until I was blue in the face and it still didnt recognise it.
ALAS, IT THEN DAWNED ON ME THAT MY LAST BACK-UP WAS IN MAY WHEN I GOT IT.
So be warned, a new disk is no guarantee that it will work. My supplier's warranty only covers replacement of the disk and I was wondering if anyone out there has any experience of these data recovery agents succesfuly recovering data from dead disks.
As a sole trading s/e 50 y-old, I dont really look forward to re-processing all my accounting/tax data since May last and cost obviously too has to come into it. Anybody?
John Mackay

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By Accounting WEB
15th Nov 2001 11:44

Freezer remedy
This is a known good solution (well, my local hardware guru recommends it). Hard discs are temperature dependent and, all things being equal, will work better at low temperatures. Actually freezing them isn't necessary, and as has been pointed out, condensation needs to be avoided where electronics are involved.

Incidentally, Scandisk can make matters worse where the hard disc is giving trouble. If Scandisk keeps on trying to fix errors, or stalls, cancel it, or it may start trying to 'recover' good files. Of course, you may be unaware of the problem in advance, so this requires some judgement!

Also beware that what appears as a hard disc problem may instead be the IDE controller on the motherboard. This happened to us recently, and was only spotted when we bought a new drive and plugged the old one into the socket normally used by the CD-ROM. The new drive wouldn't work (as it was connected to the faulty IDE channel), but the old one recovered!

HTH

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By Accounting WEB
14th Nov 2001 15:46

The mind boggles
How on earth do you discover that putting a hard disk in the freezer cures all ills?
Trial and error gone mad?

I have managed to attach a dead hard-drive to a second machine as a slave drive (by un-plugging the cd rom on the new machine) and copied the data to the new machine's hard drive. From where I rapidly back-up it up.

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By Accounting WEB
13th Nov 2001 20:32

Beware Freezing It
Freezing a hard disk should be very much thought of as a last chance repair. The life of your disk after a few hours in the freezer is likely to be in terms of hours so make sure that you have a new hard disk properly installed inside your PC before even attempting this. If it does succeed then the first thing to do is to immediately copy everything on the old hard disk to a new one. Don't even think of keeping the old disk in service in the future.

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By AnonymousUser
13th Nov 2001 21:42

If you use a frozen hard disk be careful!

If by freezing the hard disk cures all ills associated with a damaged storage media then you need to be careful, should you follow this idea. Make sure the hard disk is completely dry before using it. A wet hardware may cause more damage than the current problem.

Jay Tanna

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By Accounting WEB
13th Nov 2001 23:04

DIY disk recovery
1) Sometimes the disk does not start up especially if it has been lying idle for several days. A sharp tap on the system 1/4 second after switching on may do the trick.
Get rid of the disk and replace it this is the case.

2) It is possible to open the cover on a hard disk and run the disk with the cover on. This will certainly work long enough to do a backup and will allow you to give the disk a helping hand to start it rotating if needed. Again, bin the disk after backip.

3) On opening, if the surfaces are unscratched it is possible for a specialist to rebuild the disk.

4) Often the control electronics card on the disk can be removed and replaced by an identical model.

5) A CD R/W is a very quick, cheap and reliable back up.

6) NTFS on Windows 2000 gives a greatly improved security to the files against software accidents such as corruption of the File Allocation Tables.

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By Abacjm
14th Nov 2001 02:33

Hard Disk Problem
Thank you all for so many suggestions on recovery. Alas, like poor Yorick, the hard disk has now been consigned toa Data Recovery agent in Portsmouth (Dataquest International)on a No fix no fee basis. His initial report tells me that it refuses to boot (as if I didnt know!) and the specific electronics relating to that type of drive (!) (-I thought Fujitsu 10.2Gig H/d were fairly common) would have to be bought in from the nearest Fujitsu dealer. Presumably he is going to change the electonics on the back of the h/d as an itital step. He suggested that opening up the disk would be the last resort and only undertaken under clean-room facilities and of course additional cost. So far it will cost a min of £300+VAT for < 100mb of recovery. Hopefully, I havent managed to input 100mb of data since May, although all my saved pages from Accweb have gone forever!
I wonder if the tax payments could be frozen as well as the hard disk, or is it yet another case of skating on thin ice getting one into hot water! LOL!
Maybe I should take Jay's advice and microwave it to dry it out completely!

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By Accounting WEB
13th Nov 2001 12:49

Freeze It
If a hard disk fails an option used in the past has been to remove the offending drive and put into the deep freeze for a couple of hours.

As strange as it may seem this works for around 75% - 85% of ALL disk failures.

Much cheaper than data recovery agents and alike.

Gotta be worth a try.

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By Accounting WEB
08th Nov 2001 16:28

data recovery.
John,

If the head of your hard disk has crashed, stuck or even flown off (it has happened) the information on the actual disk platters will remain.
If the head crashed on a certain part of the disk then the actual data at that location might have become damaged. But everything else should still be intact.

Because the disk is a vacuumed unit then there is not much that you can do. Sending it off to one of the data recovery services is your best bet, they aren't cheap but they will retreive your data and return it to you on what ever medium you use ie CD, DAT, On Stream etc very quickly.
The data recovery people, will insert the disk platters into they're own equipment which simply enable them to copy the data off for you, often by the next day.
We have had to do this once in the past on our Novell servers disk and we got our data back successfully, which was a great relief.

In future I would either write any important data to CDR, use an operating system that supports mirrored disks (Win2k, NT4, XP) or even use as mentioned a second hard drive in your machine.
Download a copy of ultraback from the Internet and let Ultraback make a disk image of your first drive overnight to your second drive.

Hope this has been of some help.

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By Accounting WEB
08th Nov 2001 21:38

data recovery options
I hate Windows, but have to use it. It does try to be too clever for its own good on occasions, by bypassing troublesome installation files - sometimes leaving the system unstable. However, I too had a Fujitsu disc fail a while ago - old age - but all data was successfully recovered by replacing the controller card (the printed circuit board part) with the card from another identical disc drive.

Data can then be copied across to a new disc before rebuilding the 'salvaged' disc. Apart from Norton Utilities not recognising the disc partitions, everything else was okay.

The main lesson I learned some years ago was not to format or partition a suspect disc even if Windows offers to do so out of the kindness of its heart. As mentioned, the data recovery companies will also do their best, at a cost which may be sustainable for commercial use, but probably too much for private use.

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By Accounting WEB
07th Nov 2001 22:27

For the future John!

John,

I suggest that for the future you partition the disk. For a 10GB HD I would have 8 GB for Operating System and Program Files (Drive C) and 2 GB for DATA (Drive D).

So everyday or once a week you only need to back up drive D becasue that data is critical for your practice. Drive C can always be constructed from original CDs/Program Disks or you could take an image of this drive (once only) and store it on a CD. When there is a problem, this too can be reconstructed easily.

Hope this helps.

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By cbales
07th Nov 2001 13:08

First port of call ought to be ......
John
Your first port of call ought to be your computer hardware engineer. He/she/they should be able to extract your data files from your dead hard drive unless the disk was wiped clean during the incident. He/she/they would also have a go at getting it started with a better range of tools than most people have.

Our new backup installation is proving both very successful and easy to operate. Having used a digital streamer system for over 4 years we have recently installed a duplicate and removable hard drive. Software can be setup to back up automatically at preset times. Backup time is very rapid and the cost of the hardware and software setup was not much more than a 250Mb Zip drive, but for a 40Gb hard drive instead.

Read my article in the AccountingWeb ExcelZoneIT on surviving a systems failure at https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=22845&d=448&h=0&f=0&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

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By Accounting WEB
07th Nov 2001 09:55

Expensive Mistake
John

About 2 years ago something similar happened to me and while I was able to get it sorted, it was costly in both time and money!

It might be worth checking out www.winternals.com as they have a series of utilites which might help but it relies on you knowing what you are looking for and is a bit of a DIY job.

I have also had expereince of Ontrack Data Recovery Europe Ltd (Tel 01372 741999 at the time).They provide and excellent service, although expensive! The price depends on how quickly you want then to resolve the problem and during the consultation they will give you an indication as to how successful they are likely to be and in my case I was able to recover everything. This is what it cost me -
Consultation £100
Data Recovery £750
Hard Disk Repair £250

Good luck and hopefully other readers will be able to find a cheaper solution for you!!

Diane

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By AnonymousUser
07th Nov 2001 10:36

Hard Disk Recovery Suggestion
Our company offer a repairs service as well as computer hardware, peripherals and accounting software sales.

You could speak to one of our engineers and he would be able to give you advice and possibly help with recovery.

Martin Lea
0191 296 1500

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