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What is wrong with this hard drive?

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906 views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  RickA1  
R
#1 ·
Hi there.

I'm trying to help my mate with his dead laptop. It was running Vista and the HD was partitioned in 2 parts (lets call them C and D). Of course the C drive had the OS, and also his Documents folder. The D drive wasn't really used for anything, but did have some files on it.

I have taken the HDD out and put it into an enclosure, and connected it to my laptop via USB. After a LONG time I can see both partitions in Explorer. When I access the D drive everything works normally - the disk runs silent, and file access is fast, and I've copied everything off. However, when I try to access the C drive everything slows down, and the HD makes a heck of a noise. I can navigate through the folder structure to get to individual User folders, but when I try to access the one we need to recover files from it returns a Data Error (cyclic redundancy check). I know these are bad, but is there actually a mechanical problem with the HD?

What is my next step to recover files from C/Users/Idiot** ?

Thanks for looking - any advice?

Rick

** of course he hadn't backed up his files. Would I be posting if he had........:upset:
 
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J
#2 ·
Could be some bad sectors causing the issue but it may just be the drive is getting ready to fail. You can attempt recovery using something like TestDisk, GetDataBack or Recuva but you may get similar errors.
You may want to try to scan and repair bad sectors to see if that will at least allow you to get some of the data off the drive.
 
R
#3 ·
JMPC

Thanks for the ideas. Unfortunately, not much success.

I tried Recuva first, even though I want non-deleted files. It read the faulty partition, but I think it only got so far and either crashed/stopped. It reported about 17,000 files, but they were all system files, nothing I wanted.

Then I moved on to a demo copy of GetDataBack. A standard search (using "I don't know what's wrong", or default search pattern) replied it couldn't read anything, and a Deep Search seemed to crash - said it had 24 hours to go until end of run. I left it half an hour, but nothing seemed to be happening, so I stopped the process.

The GetDataBack help files suggested taking an image of the drive, which I'm trying to do as I write this. I'm letting it run, but I think it has encountered a bad sector and hasn't got past it....

It seems pretty clear there are some bad sectors on the drive. Can any software get past this, or am I looking at data recovery professionals?
(if I do need these, any recommendations for companies in London, UK?)

Thanks

Rick
 
G
#4 ·
basically the raw data on the drive has been damaged (cyclic redundancy error). I am from the UK and I would fist suggest you download the hard drive manufacturers diagnostic utlity from their site and see what that says, secondly you will unfortunately need to get someone to get the data of the drive before it goes bye bye.
 
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