Computer issues kept me away........

[Howdy]

I have been having some minor computer glitches the past few months. Then last Saturday my backup storage computer HD's crashed. For some reason unknown it took out both HD's and 2TB ( 2000 gig ) of data and pictures. I got out my Laptop ( main computer ) and went to search for a solution when it crashed as well. Another 120 gig of data and pictures. Both of these computers failed within 30 minutes.

I have pulled and saved the HD's in hopes of saving some data / pic's ect some how. I have installed another spare HD in the Laptop and got it working as good as possible. I have since retired ( again ) the old old Laptop ( 30 gig HD ) that I use very rarely.

120g HD: In the computer during boot up I get: System file not found is the error I am getting. How ever when hooked up via USB port I can see some folders, but I can't access the info. I'm thinking of trying to copy / replace the system files from this new HD onto the old HD and see if I can get it to boot up and access the Data.

500gig HD: Can feel it spinning inside, how ever it does a rebooting loop. Hooked up via USB it tries to read it but errors out. Computer guy told me it checks over all good, but will need to be formatted to put an operating system on it.

1.5TB HD: At first nothing worked. We were finally able to get a computer to read it and some of the folders accessed. Very Minimal data has been accessed to this point. I'm waiting on another big HD to copy everything I can get off of it. I do know that one folder couldn't be found, but it might have been stored on the 500gig drive.

I have found a couple programs ( $100+ ) and also a couple labs that say they can access the data ( $1000 - $1600 ).
Has anyone ever had luck getting data off of a failed HD? How did you do it and at what cost? Some of the data on the 120gig HD is needed but I can't afford $1000+ to get it ( if they can save that data ).

I have also thought of seeing if I could get the NSA backup of my computers. LOL

If you don't see me on here much the computer issues is probably the reason. I have 5+ years of Data to rebuild. arggggggggg
Howdy

[Motorgidd]

Howdy,

What operating system are you working with and the one with the most data is a desktop correct? It sounds like your boot files got corrupted somehow. One possible way to get the data off without replacing the boot files is connect the "bad HD" to a working computer and make the bad HD a "slave" (move a jumper on the slave HD). Then you can "browse" the slave HD from the master HD and copy off all your data. It doesn’t sound like the HD is bad from what you described, just some corrupted boot files.

[New2Tri-Z]

I cant really help you with the pc issues, but I have used a data recovery service in the past through work. We went through a company called Drive Savers http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/. It was costly around $1200 but they were able to backup the drive onto disk in a matter of a few days and had it back to me. We had lost an entire database of contacts and it was imperative we got it back.

[Howdy]

Howdy,

What operating system are you working with and the one with the most data is a desktop correct? It sounds like your boot files got corrupted somehow. One possible way to get the data off without replacing the boot files is connect the "bad HD" to a working computer and make the bad HD a "slave" (move a jumper on the slave HD). Then you can "browse" the slave HD from the master HD and copy off all your data. It doesn’t sound like the HD is bad from what you described, just some corrupted boot files.

We done that right off the bat. The one drive wouldn't load / show any files what so ever. The other 2 drives show some files but no access to them.

Running windows XP.
Howdy

[kb0nly]

What you need is Spinrite. Its all i have ever had success with here, other tools generally get a small portion or want to format to repair, etc. Its worth a shot, it can take a long time for larger drives. I recovered all of a customers personal data off a 1tb drive last month, it took four days to run through and recover but it did it. Then i was able to copy off the folders. Best bet with any of these recovery programs though is to run it connected directly to the motherboard in a desktop rather than a USB adapter as that tends to really slow the process down.

https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I wouldn't trust those drives with any important data after recovery though, if they failed once they will fail again. Usually what i see happen is one bad sector that screws up enough of the file system to prevent boot, but usually i can still recover files that werent in that sector. If your seeing large amounts of data missing you might have a failing read/write head and multiple sectors failing. Its not uncommon.

I have moved to SSD's for boot drives and HDD's for storage, but i keep backup copies of each drive using an imaging software, it creates an image to my NAS once a week on the important data that changes and once a month on the stuff that doesn't change a lot. And my NAS is also backed up to another drive that i keep in the fire safe. Redundancy is the key to not losing anything now.

Anyway, Spinrite can usually go through even those drives that won't load/show the file system, this is generally due to a corrupted table on the drive.

If nothing else Howdy if you need a helping hand and wanted to send one of those drives to me i could put it on my bench computer and run a recovery cycle on it, its not a fast process as i have taken up to a week to recover as much as i can from a drive, even to the point of freezing drives that are failing mechanically so i can get them to run a little longer before they heat up and have to refrozen. I had one that was a businesses entire financial history on it, the backup was retrieved and found to be corrupt for the last six months as well. The drive had a mechanical problem and would run at intervals of 20-30 minutes before getting hot and errors came up. I got a long Sata cable and made a long power cable and ran the drive in a ziplock bag in the freezer compartment of my mini fridge and the laptop sitting on top. Took about 36 hours but i recovered well over 90% of the data before complete mechanical failure, the drive motor seized up.

Where there is a will there is a way!

[Howdy]

If nothing else Howdy if you need a helping hand and wanted to send one of those drives to me i could put it on my bench computer and run a recovery cycle on it, its not a fast process as i have taken up to a week to recover as much as i can from a drive, even to the point of freezing drives that are failing mechanically so i can get them to run a little longer before they heat up and have to refrozen. I had one that was a businesses entire financial history on it, the backup was retrieved and found to be corrupt for the last six months as well. The drive had a mechanical problem and would run at intervals of 20-30 minutes before getting hot and errors came up. I got a long Sata cable and made a long power cable and ran the drive in a ziplock bag in the freezer compartment of my mini fridge and the laptop sitting on top. Took about 36 hours but i recovered well over 90% of the data before complete mechanical failure, the drive motor seized up.

Where there is a will there is a way!

I will keep this in mind. The 120gig HD is the one that I am most upset about. It has some info on it that is not replaceable and very much needed. I am looking into getting a SSD drive for the main system and also a couple TB hard drive for storage.

I was good at backing up files for just incase situations, how ever when your backup and your main fail within 30 minutes of each other it bites. I have decided that in the future I am going to have 3-4 backup's. I'm going to use flash drives for some files and rotate them so that the oldest one is no more than 2-3 weeks old.
Howdy

[kb0nly]

I will keep this in mind. The 120gig HD is the one that I am most upset about. It has some info on it that is not replaceable and very much needed. I am looking into getting a SSD drive for the main system and also a couple TB hard drive for storage.

I was good at backing up files for just incase situations, how ever when your backup and your main fail within 30 minutes of each other it bites. I have decided that in the future I am going to have 3-4 backup's. I'm going to use flash drives for some files and rotate them so that the oldest one is no more than 2-3 weeks old.
Howdy

Thats a good plan. I use Acronis True Image to make compressed backups of my drives. If a boot drive fails i can swap in a new drive and write the backup image to it and be back and running like nothing happened in less than an hour tops.

I use a E-Sata and a USB external drive dock for working on drives and i also use them to create backup images of my drives to a another drive that just gets tucked away in a storage caddy. I have a lot of data thats important, from family pictures to business bookwork. 64gb thumbdrives are cheap now, i have four of those as well that i use for general backup duty and toss them in the safe. I would like to backup the NAS to the cloud somewhere also but the monthly data costs is a lot more then buying a couple drives and keeping one at home and one in the safe deposit box at the bank. Thats where i store the really really important stuff and cycle that drive with my safe one at home every couple months as needed. Paranoid? Maybe... But about five years ago i had to spend two weeks recovering from a failed drive, never again!

Try not to make any changes to that 120gb until you recover from it. Any changes to it can overwrite the data your trying to rescue, thats why you need to run a read only recovery on it using a tool like Spinrite. Then when it finds recoverable data it can write it to areas it verified as empty to make sure nothing happens. Some tools will write over places that were marked as empty but had data in them you could have otherwise recovered. When you delete stuff its not really deleted, its just marked to be overwritten, when the file allocation tables get screwed up windows thinks that stuff is gone because the drive tells it that it is, but the data is still there as long as you don't overwrite it while trying to use it.

A 120gb drive would take a couple days most likely to read and recover. Could take longer depending on how bad of a mess the drive is. If you need help just let me know! Would be glad to lend a hand.

[Howdy]

I'm going to try to get that program once I get a new HD for the tower. I will then try to recover the data as best as I can. I will try to recover the 500g HD later. The 120g is the critical one. I was lucky enough to have recovery disk and 2 spare HD's for this laptop.

I might try putting the spare 250g HD in the tower tomorrow and get started. I will update as soon as I get this going.
Howdy