HDD Regenerator Use ?

[Road Runner]

Hello All,

I have a Seagate 160 GB 2.5 SATA that I have pulled from a Aspire One Netbook.

I believe the drive is bad.

I decided to play with a new toy in the toolbox. HDD Regenerator v1.51.

HDD Regen has been running about 14 hours now.

Scanned 109583Mb (224427169 sectors)

3371 Bad sectors found
2430 Bad sectors recovered.

The scan has slowed tremendously.More bad sectors are being found but recovered sectors has stayed at 2430.

I have never used this utility before and cant seem to find a manual on it.

My gut tells me this drive is trashed. Replace Replace Replace.

My question is when do you give up running this utility ???

Should I give it more time to do it's thing ?? Or are we past the point of likely benefit.

Thanks for any help in learning more tools of the trade.

Road Runner

Beep Beep !!!!!!!!!!

 

[JosephLeo]

Nice tool, Googling it now to find more about it.

If I'm trying to see if the drive is good then I just run chkdsk- that's pretty much good enough.

If I'm doing data recovery then it's a different story all together. I have a simple formula I follow.
I take the hard drive space in gigabytes then multiply it by 1.25 to get the amount of time in minutes I will allow a scan to go by before I tell the customer that the drive must be escalated to advanced data recovery which is something I can't do but I'd just outsource it instead.

For example, say if someone has a 320GB Hard Drive. I'd take the number 320GB and multiply it by 1.25 to get a grand total scan time of 400 Minutes which is 6 Hours and 40 Minutes in all. Meaning if I can't recover the data in that time period then it's considered no good and must be escalated.

I also have different rates for hard drive recovery at different drive sizes and types. I have two general categories each with their own prices per size ranks...I won't list my pricing but here are my ranks.

Computer & Laptop Data Recovery

• >80GB
• 80GB to 250GB
• 250GB to 500GB
• 500GB to 750GB
• 750GB to 1000GB
• 1TB<

Camera, Thumb Drives & Other Gadgets

• >1GB
• 1GB - 4GB
• 4GB - 16GB
• 16GB - 32GB
• 32GB - 64GB
• 64GB<

I kind of need to fix my ranks though- Kinda hard to do though since there are so many different hard drive sizes. (73.5, 80GB, 120, 160, 250, 300, 320, 400, 500, 600, 640, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000) And now we have SSD's to start looking out for so I might have to make a whole new category for those as well! I've also never tried iPod's just yet- It's something I have no experience with yet. I want to do one before a customer wants me to. I'd hate to spend an hour or so trying to figure out the proper method on a clients time.

 

[zfrogz]

I would be cautious using a tool like this with your customers at all. I have seen many drives fail completely from running repair/diagnostic before recovering the data. It sounds like this may be what happened with the drive you were playing with. Drives can fail in many different ways so I always start by pulling the SMART data from the drive first with a tool called HDTune which does not make the drive have to work. Based on the drives statistics it pulls up, I then will either get the data off the drive ASAP or use chkdsk which will quarantine the bad sectors. I am skeptical of this tool and would probably avoid using it for anything other than your own tests/play.

 

[tasaholic]

I usually go with my gut on this...have not been wrong often (more importantly,I've covered myself on the ones I have doubted).My belief is that if I were to decide to take a punt on keeping a drive my gut says is dodgy and it proved later to fail..then I'm obliged to not only correct the issue,labor-wise, but to recover any lost info...at my cost. Far safer to back-up while the drive is working and replace the drive..with the manufacturer's warranty covering the drive,and KNOW the customer is not going to scream when the system fails after being "fixed".If in doubt-throw it out!

 

[MrUnknown]

HDD Regenerator will only work on a HDD that does not have any physical damage to it.

It basically tries over and over to read a sector on a HDD, giving it plenty of time to do so, to get the data read from it correctly. It then reassigns that sector to a good one writing the data that was recovered. If the drive plans on dying sometime soon, this program has a good chance of killing it. With that many bad blocks, I can't imagine you being able to recover too much information.

If you are running HDD Regenerator on a Hard Drive, it more than likely should be replaced. You are only doing this because it is messed up and you need something from it. Despite what the marketing says, it does not "fix" anything. There are still bad blocks on the HDD and it just remaps them. Actually, the data probably became "lost" because the HDD couldn't read it and remapped it to a different sector that is now blank. This is normal behavor of a HDD and without it HDDs wouldn't be even remotely reliable.

That being said, I ran it on a HDD that took 30hrs and found around 500 bad blocks. I don't recall how many it "fixed" but it allowed me to get some additional financial data off of the drive that a business needed and they were happy.

Most customers aren't going to pay the $1,000 price tag to have data professionally recovered.

I highly recommend you guys to listen to the My Hard Drive Died podcast from Podnutz with Scott Moulton, especially the recent ones referring to DIY HDD Recovery. And the presentations on the website. He is a great guy, and knows what he is talking about.

 

[Road Runner]

I agree TOTALLY with everyone's input.

I have a new drive on the way.

I was serious when I said I was just playing with a new tool.

It is funny that Scott Moulton was mentioned.

I am taking his paid online Data Recovery / HDD Forensics course. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND his material. Scott knows his stuff from and academic and "from the trenches" perspective.

HDD Regenerator isn't in the course software that Scott provides I just really wanted to play with it and see if anyone here had any experience with it.

One thing I have learned in the course is you don't rebuild drives to put them back in service.......just get them running enough to get the data off.

Road Runner

Beep Beep !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[JosephLeo]

One thing I have learned in the course is you don't rebuild drives to put them back in service.......just get them running enough to get the data off.

That's very good advice that believe it or not many people do not know. Some if not most people just put the data right back on the dying drive after recovering it.

I've never heard of this "Scott Moulton" (Is this him?). But I'm very interested in watching, hearing and reading more about him as I do data recovery myself.

 

[MrUnknown]

Some if not most people just put the data right back on the dying drive after recovering it.

It depends on the type of recovery you are doing. Logical recovery, where the NTFS/FAT structure is only damaged but the disk is fine, you can do this.

When you think there may be some sort of physical damage in any way, then you want to work the drive as little as possible, which means only reading the data.

 

[Road Runner]

Joseph,

That is Scott's operation. it comes with actual tools to do physical rebuilds and some "paid" software.

The course is 3000.00 dollars........I have no regrets with the material I have and the ability to email Scott directly.There is also a google user group for current and past students.

You would be surprised at how many FBI ,DOJ , and the like are taking his course.

My only complaint is I have so many irons in the fire now I am going slow with the material.....but it's a work at your own pace program...so no harm.

Road Runner

Beep Beep!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[PcTek9]

I've heard of people freezing hard drives in the freezer over night (in a plastic bag) and recovering data the next day. I've changed platters on an identical drive before inside a plastic bread box wearing gloves. They say that's a super bad idea. But if you're just playing with drives that have physical damage then why not. I wouldn't advise it with a customers data, but it worked several times for me.

You have to have special bits to remove some platters though, so it gets to be interesting, usually star, or dot-star bits, or security hex, something like that. Theoretically you can do it with customer data if you build a completely clean box.

Pro's remove the platters in a clean room, then mount them on a machine that has variable speed settings and can read any drives. Then they just read the data.
As far as what you should do with this drive? If it's for a customer, and you don't have pro equipment, recover the data, then switch drives. You never want to use a disk that has a bunch of sector failures.

What you can do, is run hdtune and look at the #number of hours that drive has been running.... This will give you a great idea of the wear and tear on the drive.

 

[Road Runner]

PC TECH

We are studying a few "machines" in the course that the pros use.....You can use software but the pro's buy the machine when they get to a certain level.

One is a PC3000...about 13 grand........the TOP DOG

another is a DeepSpar Disk Imager about 3 grand.......

I understand the 3 grand machine does 85-90 percent of what the 13 grand machine does.

I will be buying the 3 grand machine when I get further along.

Hows the weather down there in Mobile ?????

Probably colder than up here in Tallassee (just east of Montgomery)

Road Runner

Beep Beep !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[JosephLeo]

PC TECH

We are studying a few "machines" in the course that the pros use.....You can use software but the pro's buy the machine when they get to a certain level.

One is a PC3000...about 13 grand........the TOP DOG

another is a DeepSpar Disk Imager about 3 grand.......

I understand the 3 grand machine does 85-90 percent of what the 13 grand machine does.

I will be buying the 3 grand machine when I get further along.

Hows the weather down there in Mobile ?????

Probably colder than up here in Tallassee (just east of Montgomery)

Road Runner

Beep Beep !!!!!!!!!!!!!

The real pros have clean rooms and swap the platters out in conjunction with these machines and better ones as well. I'm pretty sure that $13,000 isn't the "Top dog" since you can make $13,000 from a single medium-sized business customer if the data is precious enough.

 

[NickCat11]

PC TECH

another is a DeepSpar Disk Imager about 3 grand.......

Never heard of this until now. Anyone on here have any direct experience with it?

 

[MrUnknown]

I've changed platters on an identical drive before inside a plastic bread box wearing gloves. They say that's a super bad idea. But if you're just playing with drives that have physical damage then why not.

I am interested in how you kept the platters from moving because any slight movement would have caused them to become misaligned and then you wouldn't be able to read the data.

 

[MobileTechie]

I am interested in how you kept the platters from moving because any slight movement would have caused them to become misaligned and then you wouldn't be able to read the data.

Are you sure? I've read articles of DIY platter changing with apparent success.

 

[MobileTechie]

HDD Regenerator will only work on a HDD that does not have any physical damage to it.

It basically tries over and over to read a sector on a HDD, giving it plenty of time to do so, to get the data read from it correctly. It then reassigns that sector to a good one writing the data that was recovered. If the drive plans on dying sometime soon, this program has a good chance of killing it. With that many bad blocks, I can't imagine you being able to recover too much information.

Is that right for sure? Their advertising suggests that the app does more than remap but actually repairs them.

 

[Road Runner]

Mr Unknown is right on track. The platters MUST BE KEPT IN ALIGNMENT WITH EACH OTHER. As part of the course we got "platter exchange tools". They are called "coffee cans" by some in the business. I have a "can" for 2.5 inch drives and another for 3.5's. Picture a cylinder that can adjust very slightly up and down in diameter. Slide it down over the platter stack (after removing the head assembly ) tightening down gently and lifting the platters out.
You would most likely have a drive awaiting to accept the platters inches away.

Shift in the platters equals GAME OVER as Scott has said over and over.

There are stories out there of people doing platter swaps without an exchange tool but the pros think its just urban legend.

But don't take what I say as gospel....I'm just a student......

Hard Drive work is devided into two aspects. Physical and Logical.

A LOGICAL recovery is where you use software to get the data off a drive...

that could be Ontrack, FTK Imager, Get Data Back...or a thousand other utilitys out there.

PHYSICAL recovery is where you actually replace/swap parts INSIDE the drive....or between a bad drive and a "doner" drive.

After you get the drive physically working you may or may not have to do a LOGICAL recovery to actually get the data off

The PC3000 machine and Deepspar machine would still be considered a Logical recovery because no part swapping is done.The machines just have firmware and such that control the attached drive and attempt to retrieve the data.

But remember I am just a student......I am learning every day that I can.

I would enjoy discussing Data Recovery with anyone who has the time.

I will gladly share anything I get from the course.

Road Runner

Beep Beep !!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Road Runner]

The real pros have clean rooms and swap the platters out in conjunction with these machines and better ones as well. I'm pretty sure that $13,000 isn't the "Top dog" since you can make $13,000 from a single medium-sized business customer if the data is precious enough.

Joseph,

The PC3000 is as I understand it the Top Dog for commercial use. I too was shocked because heck.....that is affordable when you could pay for it in one job.

The trick is operating it. It comes from a company in Russia.....the people who have used it say the manual is horrible.You have to learn the machine.

it seems that there is a network of people who use them that share their experiences. it would be very unlikely for me to get my hands on one and actually make it work without LOTS of experience working up through the ranks.

The course highly recommends the machines....but also say you should use software to get started.

On a side note there are machines more advanced than the PC3000 but they are not available for civilian use. Top Secret Government stuff........but as we all know that technology will always filter down.


Road Runner

Beep Beep !!!!!!!!!!

 

[MrUnknown]

Is that right for sure? Their advertising suggests that the app does more than remap but actually repairs them.

It might just mark the spot as "good" and write the data back to it. I will be honest and I really don't know for sure but no software can physically fix the platter though.

Your HDD will mark a sector as bad if it has trouble reading it some specified amount of times. The sector might work fine, but had some trouble for whatever reason those times the HDD was reading it or it was written wrong in the first place.

 

[Road Runner]

ALL Hard Drives have bad sectors.

They have bad sectors from birth.

They have two different tables that keep up with the bad sectors so that the OS will ignore them and only use the good sectors.

I forget the technical names for the tables but the first table contains the bad sectors that were there at birth when the manufacturer ran its initial test.

It may be called a Bad Block List......

The next table is a list of sectors that fail or have degraded to a certain point...again the OS will ignore these sectors.

With fairly common software you can change the parameters of just what block goes into the second table......you can even bring them out of the bad table and put them back to use......although it doesnt make sense too in most cases. It's just a way to try to recover data from more sectors.

The first table is more "locked down" it takes more specialized/expensive software to add or remove a block from it. Again.....I dont know why you would want to use something that was labeled bad from birth but thats just what I have learned in Scott Moultons Course.

Road Runner

Beep Beep !!!!!!!!!!