Hard Drive issue

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Khaymen

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I had a hard drive fail to recognize last week. The computer booted and it spun up, but the computer couldn't read the drive. I went out and bought a new drive and to my horror realized that I had not backed up the old drive since I got married. I lost my wedding photos, personal documents, and financial documents like the taxes I filed in February.

It seemed a fair chance that the board on the hard drive died after three years of use, so I ordered another. Now when both drives are plugged in my computer will not recognize my new drive and keeps trying to boot from the old one. I then tried to boot with the new drive and hot install the old one, but it still won't pull info off of the old drive. It is like it will read one drive or the other, but not both.

Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
You can send it to a place that can recover files on the hard drive and send it back. Just Google hard drive data recovery.
 
Major bummer. :(

If you have another computer handy, you might see if that computer has any better luck with the drive. You should also get one of those spray dusters and dust the heck out of the thing, making sure that every crack and crevice is dust-free. Failing those things, you're likely hosed (sorry), unless you feel like paying a data recovery service to dissect and try to recover your drive.

I had a lightly used hard drive fail me a couple of years ago, taking to its grave about 500Gb of home videos. I tried everything I could think of short of hiring a data recovery service, as that can easily run into the $1000's, and the services won't promise you anything. This all culminated it my buying an identical make/model drive off eBay, swapping the circuit board, and then finally popping the drive open and swapping the disk platters over. I knew this last maneuver was a real "Hail Mary" and likely fatal, but at that point I was resigned to failure anyway. And, unsurprisingly, it didn't work. (And in case that sounds like something worth trying, realize that many drives have memories on them that are programmed at the factory with the locations of defects and other critical operational data unique to the platters, so it's very unlikely that circuit boards from "identical" drives are interchangeable.)
 
Khaymen said:
I had a hard drive fail to recognize last week. The computer booted and it spun up, but the computer couldn't read the drive. I went out and bought a new drive and to my horror realized that I had not backed up the old drive since I got married. I lost my wedding photos, personal documents, and financial documents like the taxes I filed in February.

It seemed a fair chance that the board on the hard drive died after three years of use, so I ordered another. Now when both drives are plugged in my computer will not recognize my new drive and keeps trying to boot from the old one. I then tried to boot with the new drive and hot install the old one, but it still won't pull info off of the old drive. It is like it will read one drive or the other, but not both.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

It might be that the HDD controller is faulty. I had a similar issue, albeit with IDE drives, which gave this strange behaviour. The controller is what identifies the drive to the BIOS/UEFI.

If you can replace the drive controller on the HDD, you might be able to get the disk recognised. Alternatively, you could try connecting it via an external USB-to-SATA interface. It may be that the USB interface injects its own controller ID, working round the issue (I've no idea, but maybe worth looking into).

Otherwise, your best bet would be to pay for professional data recovery. This probably starts at around US$500 to US$1000. However, there are some very dodgy data recovery companies out there. I've heard of quite a few people being scammed -- either they get charged huge fees with no data recovered, or the firm "loses" the drive.

Marka said:
P.S.... Do they still incorporate a 'Master', 'Slave', etc... jumper, on presumably SATA drives, as they once did on the old IDE (and, perhaps SCSI) drives? You might need to try to set a modern-equivalent, in the BIOS? Something you might look into or, at least a boot-priority... It seems like the 2-drives, may be competing???

No -- SATA drives have their own data channel, unlike IDE drives where each channel could support up to two drives in a master/slave configuration.
 
tiny said:
It might be that the HDD controller is faulty. I had a similar issue, albeit with IDE drives, which gave this strange behaviour. The controller is what identifies the drive to the BIOS/UEFI.

...[Y]ou could try connecting it via an external USB-to-SATA interface. It may be that the USB interface injects its own controller ID, working round the issue (I've no idea, but maybe worth looking into).

Just to add to my last post, something like this would be worth a go -- it's gotta be worth $5 before you start spending serious money.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SATA-7-15-P...836673?hash=item2a7644a541:g:zXgAAOSwo4pYP9Ne

The drive will then be identified by the USB interface ID, rather than the (possibly corrupt) drive controller ID. And maybe you'll be able to access the drive contents.
 
My advice, as an IT professional, is to leave it to data recovery people. And don't buy Seagate drives. Seagates are notorious for failing in a way where they no longer detect and you are unable to recover any data without paying for recovery services, whereas other brands you can usually get data back using recovery tools.

I've worked in the IT industry for over 10 years. Seagate is on my shitlist for consumer-grade stuff. Their server drives aren't terrible, but their consumer grade crap has half the lifespan and half the warranty of every other brand out there.
 
NovaDL said:
My advice, as an IT professional, is to leave it to data recovery people.

It depends how competent you are, how much recovery will cost, how much you value the data, etc. I'd certainly try some basic tests before paying hundreds of quidbuckeuros.
 
Maxx said:
LOL. How very multinational of you!

You know what we liberals are like -- never wanting to leave anyone out! :biggrin:
 
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