136 Gigs of PAIN!!!!

[Otraotaku]

i was recently cleaning out my 160gig hardrive because it was getting too close to full, duh!... well after about 15gigs of deletion and a few tweaks in the BIOS to my HTT bus, i was thrown into Bill gates SCREW YOU LAND... i couldnt create another partition on it or even format this drive. so i had to get my other hard drive out from another project and install windows again on it for some reason? and used my loop hole in the registering of the Product key. 

 my 160gig hardrive had collapsed on me with over 40-50 gigs of stuff i have nowhere backed up. anyone have any remedies for retreiveing fixing and maybe even repairing the Damned thing? (besides freezing it im not doing that just yet)

[USSEnterprise]

freezer

[monkeybomb]

What does the freezer do?

[Otraotaku]

its suppose to bring it back for awhile, but my previous success rate with that has been a 99.2% failure

[Otraotaku]

all the manga ive gathered over the last year has been lost... ill never be able to finish my arcade.. hah

[CheffoJeffo]

The "freezer trick" is a specific and temporary (e.g. hopefully buy enough time to move your data because your drive IS going to die permanently) solution to a specific physical problem. It is not a solution to logical problems (although people are all too happy to blindly say "stick it in the freezer"). It is not a silver bullet and should not be used until you know what the problem with your drive is.

So far, the only diagnostic information I can see is "couldn't create another partiton on it or even format this drive". Not much to go on.

What have you tried and what have the results been ?

What "tweaks" did you make (and WHY if you didn't have the drive backed up?) ?

Cheers.

[ChadTower]

And did you download the manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test it with?

[AtomSmasher]

Heres a previous thread on data recovery.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=56180.0

[CheffoJeffo]

its suppose to bring it back for awhile, but my previous success rate with that has been a 99.2% failure

Anybody who has had 32 drives fail (assuming LCD to get at 99.2%) should know all about recovery ... or at least backups.

 

Cheers.

[Otraotaku]

i was going to do that, but the HD is stuck in my chassis and the screws are stuck, and i got it from an emachine and thats all i know...   

its shows the drive is there but does not let me format partition or anything.
just shows up as 153gig blah blah... once it said 136gb,

[Otraotaku]

i just tryed drive rescue and it crashed on me...

[thebrownshow]

Freezer trick worked for me 10 years ago on an old drive where the head was skipping across the surface.  I was able to get my important data off, but after that, it was trashed.

I'd never recommend that trick to anyone though, like CheffoJeffo said, it's only for a specific problem.

[ChadTower]

i was going to do that, but the HD is stuck in my chassis and the screws are stuck

Holy CRAP that sounds painful.  Get to the ER.

[mmarx82]

I created a diagnostic disk for the place I work, I also submitted some of the utilities we use from different manufactures to http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/. I would suggest to download this multi-utility boot cd and try GWSCAN 5.09. Boot to the CD, go to menu [F2], look through the pages for it. Once you load to it do an extended test. Sometimes it fixes during the extended test. Sometimes after running the test it will want to do a full media scan. If so, do it. Good luck, also if this doesn't work the CD is full of utilities you can try.

[Otraotaku]

i finaly got the drive to format, but i m wondering if and before i start messing with it if theres a way to get atleast some of my old data back?

[AtomSmasher]

i finaly got the drive to format, but i m wondering if and before i start messing with it if theres a way to get atleast some of my old data back?

I guess I'll just copy and paste what I wrote in the previous thread I linked to.

Theres an old program called Lost and Found that is supposed to be able to recover data even if the harddrive has been formatted.  The company that made the program went out of business (or was bought out or something) and decided to release it for free before they closed their doors.  Heres a copy I downloaded at that time:
http://www.atomic-train.com/misc/lf106%20-%20Lost%20Hard%20Drive%20Saver%20-%20Even%20recovers%20if%20reformatted.zip

I've never used it, so I have no idea if it works, but its worht a try.
(if your wondering about that file name, I named it that so I wouldn't forget what it was  )  Its free and comes from the once popular utility company PowerQuest (Partition Magic, DriveImage, etc).  The software claims that if the disk is still spinning, it can recover the data, which sounds pretty good to me.

[mmarx82]

If you already formated it, then it's too late. You have to pull that data off of it before the format. I never heard of Lost and Found. Try it, if it works, great. Other than that, if your pockets are deep and you still want the data off of it, you would have to take it to a criminalistic lab where they specialize in removing hard drive data. This would cost you between $200 - $400+.

I'd like to give this Lost and Found program a try at work. It would be interesting to see how it does.

[CheffoJeffo]

i finaly got the drive to format, but i m wondering if and before i start messing with it if theres a way to get atleast some of my old data back?

What would possibly possess you to format a drive with data that you want to recover ?

STOP doing silly things or you WILL lose your data forever (if you haven't already).

If you already formated it, then it's too late. You have to pull that data off of it before the format.

 

There have been tools to recover from accidental formats for decades. A quick Google will turn up hundreds such tools.

Now, if he has overwritten the data, that is a very different issue.

Cheers.

[Otraotaku]

i tried that lost and found, found a serial for it and it requires the use of a floppy, which i do not have a drive for.

[AtomSmasher]

i tried that lost and found, found a serial for it and it requires the use of a floppy, which i do not have a drive for.

doh, I didn't realize it needed a floppy.  As I said I've never actually used the program.  Theres lots of similar programs online and I'm sure you can find something that will do the trick.  I do have to agree that formatting a drive with data on it you want to recover is not the brightest of ideas, luckily most of the data should still be recoverable.

[Otraotaku]

i tried that lost and found, found a serial for it and it requires the use of a floppy, which i do not have a drive for.

doh, I didn't realize it needed a floppy.  As I said I've never actually used the program.  Theres lots of similar programs online and I'm sure you can find something that will do the trick.  I do have to agree that formatting a drive with data on it you want to recover is not the brightest of ideas, luckily most of the data should still be recoverable.

it was the only way to get my drive active, after all it didnt even want to reformat the 1st 12 times i tried.. so im pretty fortunate i get to keep my drive.

[CheffoJeffo]

it was the only way to get my drive active, after all it didnt even want to reformat the 1st 12 times i tried.. so im pretty fortunate i get to keep my drive.

I think what you meant to say was that you THINK it was the only way to get your drive active. In my experience, most data loss is not caused by OS or hardware failure, but rather by people trying to fix their problems without first understanding either the problem or the options available. If you SLOW down and approach things more rationally, you are more likely to avoid making things worse (e.g. by reformatting the drive you want to recover!)

Why do you think you're fortunate to keep the drive ? You still don't know what happened and whether the drive has problems or not.

I wouldn't be putting much data on there, but that's me.

Cheers.

[Otraotaku]

i said before the reason the drive failed on me was because i increasted the HTT bus on my motherboard through the bios, and deleted 13gigs... obviously it was all my doing and the motherboard couldnt take it. anyways i found this program called Back2life and found everything!!!! but the trial only lets me recover files under 100k...

probly will have to get it somewhere else... sorta speak, thanks for all the moral support everyone   

[CheffoJeffo]

i said before the reason the drive failed on me was because i increasted the HTT bus on my motherboard through the bios, and deleted 13gigs... obviously it was all my doing and the motherboard couldnt take it.

NO... you said you made tweaks to the HTT settings ... I asked for details and you never responded. You never provided real specifics to allow any meaningful troubleshooting.

There is nothing 'obvious' about what happened. If you are happy with the drive, then great.

I appreciate that you are young and I undoubtedly come off as heavy-handed. In my line of work, data is everything and if you lose it, your clients go elsewhere, your career is over and your kids don't eat. It is painful to see people do something unnecessary, ask for help, ignore the help, do something sillier and THEN try and make as if the problem and solution are obvious.

But again, you are young ... I might have done the same thing a few decades ago (coinidentally the last time I lost a meaningful amount of data).

I would start thinking about real backups sometime soon. The only thing (other than the fact that people do silly things) that is certain is that drives do fail.

I'm glad you can recover your data.

Cheers.

[NightGod]

The only important data is data that is backed up.

I must repeat that phrase 20 times a month to people who tell me "Is there anyway I can get data off of that dead hard drive? It has all my kid's baby pictures and the pictures from my mother who passed away last year as well as the financial data for the last five years on it-I always meant to do a backup, but never got around to it.'

It boggles the mind.

[hypernova]

When "freezer" was mentioned, I thought it was a joke to half-assedly  cryogenically freeze the thing until someone figures out what to do in the future.

[mmarx82]

If you already formated it, then it's too late. You have to pull that data off of it before the format.

 

There have been tools to recover from accidental formats for decades. A quick Google will turn up hundreds such tools.

Now, if he has overwritten the data, that is a very different issue.

Cheers.

My Fault, I assumed that he had already put data back onto the drive. However, it is still much easier to recover before the format.

I myself have clones of all of my data. I would hate to have to re-download 50+ gig of roms and chd's, not to mention anything else I may have.

i tried that lost and found, found a serial for it and it requires the use of a floppy, which i do not have a drive for.

Maybe AtomSmasher could take and convert it to .img or .ima format and repost a link. Nero will let you create a bootable CD of the .ima. Or you could use Easyboot from http://www.ezbsystems.com/easyboot/index.html to create a bootable CD with a graphical GUI. This will let you run .img and .ima files, and a multitude of other programs.