Hard Drive Missing

[smlie4]

Hard Drive Completely Missing BIOS etc.

I had customer bring in laptop which they said it was running slow and they can only get to work in 'safe mode' and they think it is virus.

I open in normal mode I installed Malewarebytes started a full scan and then went out on callout.

When I got home it found no virus and as I clicking around and getting slow movements from a computer fitted with 4GB RAM and looking and listening as we do I soon realize the hard drive probably is faulty, so I restart with HDD Scan. The next day I ring the customer and say hard drive is only 34% checked and it has over 3,000 errors already which means you need a new drive.

I get the new drive, install windows, office etc. My next step is to use FABS backup the only thing is when I went to slave the laptop SATA hard drive on my workbench Windows tells me I need to 'format' the drive to use it. I shut down computer move the drive back to the laptop start Hirens Boot CD with intention of copying the files over the network only to find the hard drive is not present. I start Partition Wizard and again no drive available, I checked BIOS and nothing there either.

My guess is that SECTOR 0 where the information about the drive has been corrupted. Is there anyway to get the drive visible again to pull of the customers files?

 

[4ycr]

I have had a few of these lately and found getdataback to be the best solution for recovering the data, however both of mine were external drives.

 

[smlie4]

I have had a few of these lately and found getdataback to be the best solution for recovering the data, however both of mine were external drives.

I am just looking into getdataback now.

I have just swapped the drive back from the laptop onto my test bench and in BIOS menu the Hard Drive is showing. After I loaded my bench computer (win7) with hard drive as slave I immediately get message from Windows telling me to format the slave drive if I want to use it.

 

[joydivision]

I've found in this situation that Ubuntu will often recover it, but it can take an age to get the data back. I used a SATA dock and it worked via Ubuntu and managed to recover all the data, despite windows just asking me to format the disk and CHKDSK not working.

 

[jbartlett323]

I have had a few of these lately and found getdataback to be the best solution for recovering the data, however both of mine were external drives.

GetDataBack is your absolute best friend in these situations! i have used it many, many times on just these circumstances. works about 87% of the time, the other 13% your just hosed and nothing works!
if GDB doesn't work, there are many other softwares out there like R-Studio or Stellar Pheonix. I have used both, although R-Studio seems to be about the ultimate in software data recovery. GDB is just easier to use

 

[smlie4]

Ok I am going to run Get Data Back today. Got a feeling it is going to take 24 hours or more, any thoughts?

On two computers the drive is showing but I can not view as I get message saying the drive needs to be formatted before it can be used.

I don't want to run CHK disk on the drive as the drive is definitely on the way out and I don't want to start moving anything around in case I completely lose it altogether.

 

[Martyn]

Ok I am going to run Get Data Back today. Got a feeling it is going to take 24 hours or more, any thoughts?

On two computers the drive is showing but I can not view as I get message saying the drive needs to be formatted before it can be used.

I don't want to run CHK disk on the drive as the drive is definitely on the way out and I don't want to start moving anything around in case I completely lose it altogether.

Buy Getdataback, image the drive and work on the image. You won't be disappointed.

 

[red12049]

I am just looking into getdataback now.

I have just swapped the drive back from the laptop onto my test bench and in BIOS menu the Hard Drive is showing. After I loaded my bench computer (win7) with hard drive as slave I immediately get message from Windows telling me to format the slave drive if I want to use it.

Faced the same situation yesterday. BIOS saw the drive, SMART warning of "imminent failure", Windows wanted to format the drive. Testdisk recovered what I needed (2 different identities).

Rick

 

[smlie4]

Get Data Back doing the trick.

It took just about 2 days to scan 320GB sata laptop drive. I started restoring the USER folder (win7) yesterday 24 hours later I am 86% complete.

I had got another job 2 days ago where lady had gone on holiday to Italy took all her snaps and when she got back she got a FORMAT message on her SD.

Put Get Data Back to work but no such luck.

Told customer her only option now to send to data recovery center who can unsolder chip inside her card and put into their chip reader.

She wasn't so bothered about the photos once I suggested their standard charges for doing this and said she will ask her friends who were on the trip if she can get a copy of their photos.

Cheers for input everyone.

 

[TLE]

Get Data Back doing the trick.

It took just about 2 days to scan 320GB sata laptop drive. I started restoring the USER folder (win7) yesterday 24 hours later I am 86% complete.

I had got another job 2 days ago where lady had gone on holiday to Italy took all her snaps and when she got back she got a FORMAT message on her SD.

Put Get Data Back to work but no such luck.

Told customer her only option now to send to data recovery center who can unsolder chip inside her card and put into their chip reader.

She wasn't so bothered about the photos once I suggested their standard charges for doing this and said she will ask her friends who were on the trip if she can get a copy of their photos.

Cheers for input everyone.

Wouldn't an SD card be formatted in FAT32 usually. Not sure if you realized but GetDataBack comes in FAT and NTFS versions.

 

[smlie4]

Wouldn't an SD card be formatted in FAT32 usually. Not sure if you realized but GetDataBack comes in FAT and NTFS versions.

Any suggestions on a good FAT32 recovery program?

 

[DanB]

Faced the same situation yesterday. BIOS saw the drive, SMART warning of "imminent failure", Windows wanted to format the drive. Testdisk recovered what I needed (2 different identities).

Rick

testdisk worked great. PhotoRec (part of testdisk) recovered everything on a hard drive with no MFT.

I first used spinrite to fix all the disk errors (they want you to buy 4 licenses for commercial use) then used testdisk to see if the backup MFT could be restored. It could not. With the disk surface repaired I got every bit of data off using Photorec.