Hard Drive Crashed...literally

GWC Community GWC Hive Mind
#1

Last night, my good friend (my good, good friend, I’m trying to remind myself) tripped on a power cord and yanked my external hard drive off the table. It promptly crashed to the floor with many dramatic flips and bounces. At the time, we were just minutes away from presenting a short video to an artists’ group, but it had to be scrapped because the video was on my hard drive. Now when I turn it on, it makes a horrible grinding noise. I have several projects on there, including my recent entry into a short film competition, and my senior overview from film school. I need to rescue the material off this thing. What can I do?

The hard drive is a Western Digital model, 500GB, with USB 2.0 access (no Firewire) and is about 5 years old. I don’t have the rest of the specs on me, but I know that it is formatted to read on Macs only, as I was working on Macs in film school and didn’t know about formatting external hard drives to be readable on both platforms.

I was planning shortly to save up for a new drive, since this one is old and almost full, so I’m dreading having to shell out extra money to fix this sucker. Solutions, Hive Mind?

#2

If there was any damage to the platters, it’s a goner. If you can still read data from it back it up ASAP or get that new drive and move what you can to it.

#3

What he said. Grinding noises are 99.9% fatal. :frowning:

#4

Yeah, if it’s grinding, you’re most likely screwed. If the grinding is a result of frakked platters, then there’s nothing that can really be done. If by some chance the grinding is a result of damage to the platter’s motor and not the platter itself, though, there might be a barely visible glint of hope. Depending on how far you’re willing to go to recover the data, you might be able to send your drive to a data recovery place & have them pull whatever they can off the platters.

#5

I remember reading an article years ago, some criminal forensics lab had found a way of reading data from damaged disks, but I have not heard of any company that does this. I think that the process is expensive enough that only government (Criminal and intelligence) services would bother trying to get data off of damaged disks.

I don’t think there is a company that will pull the data off the drive if the drive is damaged but the disks arn’t.

So if you can’t get the data off of the drive when you plug it in, it’s time to hold a memorial service.

My sympathies for your loss. :frowning:

#6

There are a bunch of companies that do it, actually. If it’s worth it depends upon how much you value your data.

#7

I can only say, I feel your pain. This happened to me once, lost everything. I now backup on 2 different external drives. Good Luck my friend.

#8

A couple of questions…

does the drive still appear when attached to the computer?

Does the drive make the noise you mentioned in every postion? ie… upside down or sideways etc…)

if the read head was damaged but on only one of its supports you might be able to use gravity hold the head true enough to rescue your data. but be ready if it works to get your data in order, one file at a time, from most important on down. Hard drives spin VERY fast and one that has damage could do just about anything. and you probably won’t have long until the vibration breaks the other supports.

they way the recovery people do it is to disassemble the drive and rebuild it in a new housing. this requires a “clean” room. the last time I looked into this kind of recovery the price was upwards of $3,000…

BTW- these are straws i am grasping at… it is very likely… a no win senario…sorry.

#9

Ugh…I’m so depressed. I’ll try a few things, but it definitely wasn’t appearing any more when I plugged it in to the computer.

#10

I understand that it is in an USB enclosure. Have you tried opening up the enclosure, making sure that everything is still connected. I know one of my hard drives SATA cable has came loose once or twice. You could try plugging it directly into your computer rather that using an enclosure if that is possible with your particular model. But from the sounds you describe it may be dead.

#11

As a last ditch effort to get data off a drive, we put it in a ziploc bag and then froze it in the freezer for 24 hours. We got 1 boot-up and were able to get our most important data off before it died for good.

#12

I stand most humbly corrected.

Still, grinding noise does mean sending it to a professional to extract the data.

#13

Holy crap, that actually works?

#14

the wonders of the freezer never ceases to amaze me.

#15

Wow, that’s truly incredible. Thanks, Splatterson. I’ll keep that nugget tucked away if all else fails. How exactly does that work? What does freezing do?

#16

Have you tried Spinrite. If any program will recover the data it will. You will need to connect the HD directly to your Intel-based PC. It is $89, you could always get it by other means to try and if it works buy it. It scans every sector on the HD and will rewrite bad sectors to good parts of the drive. Hopefully the platters aren’t cracked.

Freezing should be the very last resort. I remember Steve Gibson (creator of Spinrite) talking about it on Security Now! but I can’t remember what he said the freezing did. I do remember that he said it was a last resort and is damaging to the HD ultimately.

Good luck!

#17

Freezing will cause all the metal inside to contract a little bit. sometimes enough to allow the drive to move freely again. However, since hard drives spin so fast and gain heat so fast you only have a couple of minutes tops to retreive your data. and since the drive is expanding so fast it is usually fatal to the already damaged drive.

#18

It did for us that one time!

Freaky, isn’t it?

Supposedly it will make the platters and stuff contract and un-stick themselves. Don’t know if it will work for you or not but you’re only only a ziplock bag and some time!

Yea - what he said. :slight_smile: