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Elite Baiter Joined: 16 Jul 2008 Posts: 1407

My lovely daughter used my laptop last night. Upon finishing her homework, she closed it, and rested it on it's edge against the wall.

It slid about 8" down to the floor. Apparently the HD was still spinning. Wouldn't load up last night.

Pulled the drive out, put the SATA drive on an external enclosure I had, and put the USB into my downstairs PC. My computer recognizes the drive as a HD, but is showing the size as "zero" 0GB.

I think the partitions are shot. Doesn't make any rattles, and seems to spin up ok upon power up.

I can't afford the services of a clean room to take apart the drive. Apart from some family pictures (backed up), and family home movies (not backed up) there isn't a whole lot. But the movies would really be nice to get back.

Any really good software that one would recommend? I don't mind paying, but I would prefer some sort of demo to make sure it's going to work. I can afford around $50-75USD.

Thanks in advance.

The drive itself is a Fujitsu 100GB. It originally was split into 2 drives. An 11 GB section for HP(the system restore data), and 89 GB for general use.

I am using a quad core intel PC with Vista Ultimate. I have enough HD space on the PC to make a total transfer of data to restore.

I know just enough PC stuff to get myself in trouble. But not enough to fix this problem.

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2009 9:06 pm

I did a quick google. Try and put the HDD in a zip lock baggy and slap that baby in the Fridge for a while (or freezer for significantly less time). take it out and let it get warm again. This may free it up if anything is jammed ro binding...if all else fails, shake the piss out of it. You tried the "usb" thing, and it didn't work....couldn't you just find something on eBay for cheapish? 100gigs isn't very much. it might only cost you 100 bucks.

EDIT: I found a program called "SpinRite" it includes an ISO to burn to cd-r.. do that, plug drive into pc & boot from the cd and let it crank away in repair mode. I might be able to swing that for you. I'll download it tonight when I get off work. which is in 15 mins.

Elite Baiter Joined: 16 Jul 2008 Posts: 1407

The problem isn't the size/cost of a new drive.

At issue is the 2 years of family home video that is/was on the HD. I have some backed up on my basement computer, but not all of it. And some pictures.

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2009 9:46 pm

TS If you can't get it to work yourself, you can probably take the HD to a computer repair place and retrieve the data.

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:23 pm

yeah I understand. Try the fridge thing...or not, but ill download that program.

Elite Baiter Joined: 16 Jul 2008 Posts: 1407

@Harvest Moon,

That is too $$. It's about $100 bench charge before they start, and then about $100/hr after that.

If you need a clean room a regular HD can run $2700. Thats out of my budget.

Unless you want to WU me the funds....

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2009 11:17 pm

Not that you want to do it (I didn't want to but I had to as I had about 10,000 photos on a crashed HD--unfortunately it decided to crash while I was copying data to a new backup drive after the original failed--so I had 2 crashed drives at one time) but if you end up desperate, I actually found a company who charged me $400 about a year ago for a clean room recovery (and yes, they were successful) and have a "no-data, no fee policy"

Of course now I am ultra paranoid and I backup to 2 different drives...

I think you are in my neck of the woods, too.

419Eater is my life Joined: 08 Aug 2008 Posts: 475

at http://dposoft.net
they have a programm called hd-regenerator.
the trial version will gonna tell you, if the full version could be sucessfull.
this works mainly on bad sectors, but you could give it a try

i used other data-recovery-software (google for that) also sucessfull in the past, but not on physical-demaged drives. a good and free one is test-disk,
at http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
it runs on command-line (windows)
good luck

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

I had to do this recently on a re-partitioned USB stick. I've forgotten what I used, but it was on Linux anyway. The software is certainly out there.

If you've damaged the heads, then nothing is going to work except the clean-room, and in that case you should leave it alone because trying to read it could damage the disk more. But if you are sure you can't afford that route, it wont matter.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

I've just realised that Personal Computer World for March 2009 has an article on this subject. It should still be on the shelves, but hurry because I have already received the April edition here.

They recommend Recuva: http://www.pcw.co.uk/2187036 or http://www.recuva.com/

Others they mention:
www.softperfect.com
www.glarysoft.com
www.pcinspector.de

And more on the PCW download portal: www.pcw.co.uk/downloads

They tested Recuva against www.Active-Undelete.com, and Recuva won. However for $39.99 Active Undelete has the ability to search for file patterns; so it can theoretically find a file even if the folder data has been wiped. The Enterprise version can restore deleted partitions, but if you've had physical damage on the platter, it may not be possible to write to that section of the disk.

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