Seagate HDD Issues

M

mattastechservice

New Member
Reaction score
0
Got a call last night from a client about his OS constantly rebooting, so I figured OS corrupted files, virus, MBR corrupted, or hard drive failure.

Did a chkdsk /r /p which sat there after the 3rd stage for hours. Told the client I had to take the machine home (which I hate), so I can have access to more of my tools.

Popped the drive into my machine and ran GSmartControl and got errors
Ran the Seagate tools (long test) and got 99 errors after 1% and read scan failure.
Popped in hirens BC and tried MiniXP, nothing. Tried TestDrive and got something. I can see the whole file structure now on the drive 200GB (186GB free), and repairing the MBR gives me an error.

So my question really is any advice and possibly what would be a good DOS program to recover data.
 
mattastechservice said:
Got a call last night from a client about his OS constantly rebooting, so I figured OS corrupted files, virus, MBR corrupted, or hard drive failure.

Did a chkdsk /r /p which sat there after the 3rd stage for hours. Told the client I had to take the machine home (which I hate), so I can have access to more of my tools.

Popped the drive into my machine and ran GSmartControl and got errors
Ran the Seagate tools (long test) and got 99 errors after 1% and read scan failure.
Popped in hirens BC and tried MiniXP, nothing. Tried TestDrive and got something. I can see the whole file structure now on the drive 200GB (186GB free), and repairing the MBR gives me an error.

So my question really is any advice and possibly what would be a good DOS program to recover data.
Click to expand...

I think you got everything ass backwards in how you approached this particular machine. You ran diagnostics after an attempt at a fix failed? Perhaps you haven't encountered PCX and his whole evangelism of diagnostics, but you really should have started there in this case.

I personally would seek the advice of some members on here that are very knowledgeable on data recovery before you screw the pooch with your tinkering. 300DR and lcoughey are the ones I am thinking of.
 
Re:

Because it's a Seagate HD you could possibly be looking at a firmware issue or in the best case scenario a PCB board issue. Since you were able to see the HD and run "diagnostics" on it, you could have probably and easily started with a backup of the data and that means something like cloning or imaging the drive.
Small piece of advice, and I don't want to be mean, if you are not sure what you are doing, make sure you know what you are doing. Don't run check disks on possibly bad HDs, because you could jeopardize the customer's data.
The hardware can be replaced, you should not be trying to fix the hard drive because that is an inexpensive and unreliable piece of hardware (unless you cannot get to the data), but you should make sure you get the data first and if you got the data, which should be first on your list, then you can run diagnostics on a hard drive to see what is wrong with it. Check disk is the worst diagnostic tool out there to determine whether a HD is bad. I guess you don't have so much experience in this arena, so I would advise you to listen to some podcasts about data recovery and practice on your own drives, instead of someone else's drive.
 
Ditto to what Cornerstone Technologies & onetech4all said. If it's not logically destroyed now after all the stuff you tried, there is a chance it's still recoverable. If it's worth $300, consider sending it to us to avoid any further damage/problems. If it's not worth at least $300 to your client, I'm not sure what options remain. You could try cloning with DDRescue as rjframe mentioned, then scanning the image using something like Rstudio.
 
unstoppable copier is another good option... works well i have found.
 
Odds are that the drive is physically starting to fail. One head may be weak or not reading at all and/or there is a lot of bad sectors.

I've suggested this in other threads and I will say it again. Don't risk your client's data, unless you are looking to have the sue you for negligence.

You really cannot undo what you already did, but you can stop making it worse. Make sure that their data is 100% backed up. If you cannot backup the data, you should seek the assistance of a data recovery pro. I cannot speak for other labs, but we encourage technicians to call us right away so that we can discuss the best course of action. Yes, a lot of the time, we suggest that they send it in for assessment. But, other times, we will suggest a few safe things that they can try...or a few riskier things that they can do, if they have confirmed with the client that the data is not worth $300 or more.

As for this project, it seems that you are in a bit over your head and might have already made things worse. I suggest that you contact your client and determine the value of their data and if it is worth $300 or more, send it to a pro to get a free quote.

Good luck.
 
Almost every system that walks in the door gets the drive cloned before we work on it (saves a buttload of work if you mess something up), plus if the drive is/does fail(ing) the customer will see you as a lifesaver!
 
SprinterTech-WI said:
Almost every system that walks in the door gets the drive cloned before we work on it (saves a buttload of work if you mess something up), plus if the drive is/does fail(ing) the customer will see you as a lifesaver!
Click to expand...

Suggestion ST: I used to offer to backup the drive as a service before any tuneup for $20 (it could be offered as a service before doing anything with the computer also). As there is ALWAYS a risk the hard drive may untimely die when in my possession (or if say DiskWarrior went crazy and destroyed the data). It was cheap (since it was really helping me as much as client if the drive dies or something in tuneup went horribly wrong) and this way you make a little money for your work backing up the drive. Just something to consider.
 
I, too, used to offer the data backup prior to service as an option to my clients for a small fee. If they turned it down, we would do it anyway to cover our own butts. But, if they paid for it, it helped ease the pain of the extra time spent on the project.
 
I still backup most drives, not all I'll admit, but its extremely time consuming. Its dead time I know because I'm usually doing another PC but it adds to turnaround.

I'd love to find a quick reliable backup program that doesnt want to take hours and hours even for a small(ish) disk
 
I'd love to find a quick reliable backup program that doesnt want to take hours and hours even for a small(ish) disk
Click to expand...

If we AREN'T talking about data recovery here, then Acronis/Ghost as Cornerstone Technologies mentioned are popular. Personally for my PCs, I've been cloning them with Casper 7 and love it. The only cloner I've found so far that creates a "live" bootable clone, that is to say I don't need to startup from cd/dvd or external drive to make the clone (and you can simply swap out original hard drive for clone and the computer will boot). This is obviously easiest when the drive is in the computer.

If you don't mind removing the drive from the computer to clone it (which would be safer), and it's something you'll be doing frequently, there are hardware cloner that are much faster (though expensive), like the YEC Ninja: http://www.jharddrive.com/products/hard_drive_duplicator.html. There may be much cheaper options for straight-up-clones as well (I'm sure I've seen some on Amazon).
 
Cornerstone Technologies said:
I wonder what programs you are using. Typically, I use Acronis or Ghost, sometimes other tools, and even for 1TB drives, imaging rarely takes more than 50 minutes.
Click to expand...

I've used Acronis and O&O DI 5 pro.

I recently put a hybrid drive in my laptop and wanted to backup the old drive first so used both and they took around 4 hrs ( 412GB of data) each. I cloned drive to drive through USB 2 and that took 12!

It bugged me so I then put both drives onto my bench top and used native sata and it still took around 6 hrs to clone.

I know there's alot of data on mine but I still think time excessive and can't blame USB since it took awhile on the test rig.

It sometimes works out at about 2 hours average for clients so I'd love to get to 50 min!!

Just how much data do your client typically have? Most of mine seem to iTunes and movie mad! That might be the reason slow as loads of small files and quite a few large ones!
 
You are doing a "file" clone. This is almost always slower unless the drive isn't very full. A sector/byte clone (or hardware cloning machine/tool) will be faster.
 
Ah thats my ignorance - I assumes the option to clone sectors would be everything including empty space so would take forever, I'll try again and read the options more carefully.

Thanks for insight!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

HCHTech
Quickbooks Enterprise 2024 multi-user issues
Replies
7
Views
132
Markverhyden
Markverhyden
HCHTech
Permission Hell
Replies
12
Views
480
Sky-Knight
Sky-Knight
HCHTech
Windows server activation problems
Replies
12
Views
408
Sky-Knight
Sky-Knight
JohnDoe1980
XP Laptop boot loop
2
Replies
28
Views
2K
Philippe
Philippe
E
[REQUEST] Corrupted Bitlocker SSD will not unlock
2
Replies
30
Views
3K
labtech
labtech
Back
Top