I know there was a thread about one of the HTF server drives dying. I didn't see a resolution in there. Anyway, I'm hoping to salvage some data. I've been doing research and not being hasty. So far, I have investigated jumpers, bios, and cabling, put the drive into a different computer, and gotten the same results.
The bios sees the drive and can identify it.
Windows will assign a letter to it.
Windows will not access it, says it needs to be formatted, and will occasionally give me a properties window that inaccurately says there is no space on the drive, and that the drive is 0 bytes.
None of this is good, I know.
I tried running Convair PC Inspector Drive Recovery last night. Once, it did see the directories in preview, but was unable to retrieve the data. I'm taking the seeing of the directories as a positive sign.
After a few hours of being unable to actually get any data, I followed through on advice on the "freezer trick". I have the drive currently in a vaccuum-sealed bag (plus a silica packet) in my deep freezer. Most advice says the longer the better, so I am probably going to give it a shot over the weekend, which will give it several days to stay cold. Additional advice recommends keeping the drive cold, once you start using it (assuming you can get it going). Maybe I should get some dry ice for this?
Anyway, the stuff I read about data recovery indicates a certain commonality, which is to get your data off the drive ASAP. With that in mind, assuming I get the drive into a recoverable state, what is the best route to recovery?
Should I boot the pc and see if Windows Explorer will do the trick, or should I go straight-away to a recovery utility?
If I use a recovery utility, what is the best one? I suspect Spinrite would be a good choice, but I have read that it can take a very long time to do its work.
I already have Norton Disk Doctor, so it would seem wise to try what I already own.
I downloaded Abstradrome HDD Regenerator, which promises to fix things like bad MBRs, which I kind of suspect could be the problem here.
Thanks, Buzz
(And yes, I do plan to reconfigure my systems with RAID 1...could use some advice on drives, like do they have to be identical, or just the same size?)
The bios sees the drive and can identify it.
Windows will assign a letter to it.
Windows will not access it, says it needs to be formatted, and will occasionally give me a properties window that inaccurately says there is no space on the drive, and that the drive is 0 bytes.
None of this is good, I know.
I tried running Convair PC Inspector Drive Recovery last night. Once, it did see the directories in preview, but was unable to retrieve the data. I'm taking the seeing of the directories as a positive sign.
After a few hours of being unable to actually get any data, I followed through on advice on the "freezer trick". I have the drive currently in a vaccuum-sealed bag (plus a silica packet) in my deep freezer. Most advice says the longer the better, so I am probably going to give it a shot over the weekend, which will give it several days to stay cold. Additional advice recommends keeping the drive cold, once you start using it (assuming you can get it going). Maybe I should get some dry ice for this?
Anyway, the stuff I read about data recovery indicates a certain commonality, which is to get your data off the drive ASAP. With that in mind, assuming I get the drive into a recoverable state, what is the best route to recovery?
Should I boot the pc and see if Windows Explorer will do the trick, or should I go straight-away to a recovery utility?
If I use a recovery utility, what is the best one? I suspect Spinrite would be a good choice, but I have read that it can take a very long time to do its work.
I already have Norton Disk Doctor, so it would seem wise to try what I already own.
I downloaded Abstradrome HDD Regenerator, which promises to fix things like bad MBRs, which I kind of suspect could be the problem here.
Thanks, Buzz
(And yes, I do plan to reconfigure my systems with RAID 1...could use some advice on drives, like do they have to be identical, or just the same size?)
