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Rhalex · Posted once Joined: 05 Sep 2010 Posts: 1

Hy to everyone! I'm new here so I'll get right to the point: my hdd died suddently.It wasn't making any clicking sound or anything, it hasn't been dropped, splashed,watered or anything like that.It died on me right out of the blue . It's a MK3265GSX 2.5" model. My BIOS still sees it, but it can't load Windows,and I can't reinstall a fresh copy either. I mounted it inside a desktop as a slave, the other BIOS sees it also but I can't access my files. I tried booting a Win Xp to install a fresh copy on my desktop PC, and again setup sees it, BUT from the 3 partitions that I have, it saw 2 as completely free (which shouldn't be normal), and one normal (by normal I mean from a total size of 129GB there were only 24GB free, as I knew it was). The electronic board dosen't present any visible defects (burn marks,shorts), and yesterday I took a stetoscop and listened for any strange noises. The drive spins, I can even hear the head moving but still...no go .

A friend recommended I use PC Inspector to try and recover my data. It took close to 30hours to finish the scan and when it did, it recognised the file types (audio, doc, pdf, exe) but every file had 1.47MB. Tried to open them, "can't acces file, file is corrupt!". Tried on another pc, same thing.

Today I mounted it back again and tried to boot a Linux recovery cd from a flash usb. My old desktop can't boot from usb,so I tried again to boot a WinXP version to check if it still sees the faulty hdd. Surprise,surprise, now all 3 partitions apear as free .
I tried mounting back on my laptop and try to run Linux from there...It sees the hdd in BIOS as "Toshiba MK3265GSX (S1)" but when to boot, it gives me the error: " There's a problem with the hdd....read/write error" something like that.

Have I made my problem worse?

Curently I'm a student in Bucharest, Romania, I'm starting my 3'rd year in Computer Science and I can't afford the cost of a recovery data service. I did however went for a free diagnostics, and they told me it could be 2things: either a Firmware problem or a mechanical problem.Both of which are expensive...

Can someone help me please? I would very much like to recover my data. I had some important files on the hdd that I need for my bachelor's degree.

deadhardrive · Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 6:34 am Post subject:

Hi,
Seems to be a pcb/firmware issue so no big deal.....Do you know how to rewrite firmware on the disk and do you have the equipment to do it?
You might need a new exact same pcb as well...

Anyway if you are in computer things already, it should be easy and cheap for you to get it back.

Very Happy

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fzabkar · Deadharddrive regular +3 Joined: 02 Apr 2010 Posts: 210

Clone your drive sector-by-sector using a tool that knows how to work around bad sectors, and then use data recovery software on the clone.

Some freeware cloning tools are ...

dd_rescue: http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/
ddrescue: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html

Comparison between ddrescue and dd_rescue:
http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Ddrescue

Ddrescue can perform multipass cloning. It clones the easy sectors on the first pass, and attempts the more difficult ones on subsequent passes. It can also clone your drive in reverse, thereby disabling lookahead caching. It keeps a log, allowing it to resume after an interruption.

The following thread discusses various freeware and commercial cloning tools:
http://forum.hddguru.com/the-best-disk-cloning-hardware-software-t10396.html