Recovery software

[Nicolas Hanson]

One of mye internal hard drives are no longer recognized on my computer, not even in the disk manager. I've tried different machines (both PC/MAC) and even tried to connect it as an USB drive. I remember that a software called DiskWarrior for MAC was used many years ago to recover files from damaged disks. Do you have any experience with alternative softwares for Windows that might could bring my files back?

[Bruno Mansi]

Nicholas.

SpinRite (https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) has had a lot of followers over the years, as one of the best recovery tools. There's a couple of videos on the web site that explains some of the techniques it uses to try and recover data from disks.

Of course, if your hard disk is completely dead (ie. platters not spinning or heads not moving) there's not much any software can do for you. In these cases, there are specialists who'll take your disk apart (for a price) and replace the problem components, or even move your whole disk platter assembly to another (similar) drive. If you search on YouTube, you'll find some videos of the procedure.

The success of any of these methods rests on whether the surface of the platters remains largely undamaged. If the magnetic coating on the platters (which holds your data and is a very thin layer on the steel platters) has been scrubbed off by the heads impacting the surface, your data is now a pile of metal filings! You can sometimes see this if the air filter pad in the disk is visible from the exterior. It should normally look white in colour - however, if it's been heavily blackened, that's usually a sign of surface damage.

Good luck!

[Frank Wylie]

Nicolas,

I have been able to recover data from totally dead drives by simply replacing the driver board on the HDD.

Now, since I bought the drive that failed as one in a lot of 20, I had a lot of exact spares from which to attempt swapping the interface board.

If you don't have an exact match, try this place:  http://www.hddzone.com/

"Most HDD PCBs' failures are caused by Motor Controller Chip burnt, then the TVS diodes burnt and Main Controller IC burnt."

This is MUCH cheaper than a commercial service, and, they probably try this first ANYWAY!

 

Frank

Edited June 9, 2017 by Frank Wylie
clarity

[Andy Minuth]

First You have to find out, if the controller is defect (1) or the disks themselves having data corruption (2).

1: In this case the disk is not visible to the computer at all. You should check with several computers/OS. Like Frank recommended, replacing the controller chips is easy and helped me as well a couple of times.

2: In this case You can see at least the chipset of the disk in Your operating system. My recommendation is to rescue the data with the free software 'TestDisk'. I used it successfully several times (with OS X and Linux). At times 100% of the data got rescued. Please google the correct usage of it. First You should make an image of Your defect drive for example.

Disclaimer: Complete data loss might occur. For very important data please consult an expert.

 

[MsGeeky]

I also need help in recovering data

[Bruno Mansi]

On 4/8/2022 at 7:18 AM, MsGeeky said:

I also need help in recovering data

Did the previous comments in this thread not give you the info you wanted?

A description of your problem might help.

[hazyhobby95]

Bruno Mansi said:

Nicholas, SpinRite has had a lot of followers over the years and has built a reputation as one of the better-known recovery tools for troubled hard drives. There are a couple of videos on the website that explain some of the techniques it uses to try to recover readable data from damaged or unreliable sectors, and they are worth watching if you want to understand what the software is actually doing rather than just running it blindly. Of course, there is still a hard limit to what any software can accomplish. If the drive is completely dead, for example if the platters are not spinning at all, the heads cannot move, or the electronics have failed badly enough that the system cannot communicate with the drive, then a software recovery tool is not going to bring it back. At that point you are really into professional data recovery territory. If the drive is still detected and can at least read intermittently, though, tools like SpinRite may still be worth considering depending on how important the data is. After spending too much time thinking about sectors, heads, and recovery attempts, I sometimes switch to something unrelated like https://casinovacasino.com.de/  casinova casino, where slots vary in themes, reel layouts, visual effects, and game mechanics, while live games have a different pace and presentation. The interface and category navigation also make it a very different kind of thing to browse. Hopefully the drive is still alive enough that software has a chance.

 

Good points, Bruno. I’d also add that if the drive is not showing up in BIOS/UEFI or Disk Management at all, I’d avoid running recovery software repeatedly on it for now. Every power-up can make things worse if there’s a mechanical or firmware issue.

 

First thing I’d try is the simple stuff: different SATA/USB adapter, different cable, direct SATA connection if possible, and listen for any clicking/spin-up sounds. If the data is really important, a professional recovery lab is the safest route. If the drive does show up later, cloning it first with something like ddrescue before attempting file recovery is usually the better approach than scanning the failing disk directly.