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Gear / Technical Help => Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity => Topic started by: ianstone on July 17, 2007, 04:00:30 AM
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i have a drive which is making a clicking sound
the computer will not see it upon startup.
it has some valuable data that i need to recover.
can anyone help?
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I'm also interested. I have a pile of 3 hard drives sitting on my desk I'd like to try and salvage data from but never got around to seriously looking into it. One internal clicks like Ian's and is unrecognized. A Maxtor external had it's file indexing system screwed when a photo application (ACDsee) tried to optimize it's database.. blink, no files or directory structure visible. I'm sure they're there, but the file system doesn't see them. Third is an XP boot drive that I tried to move to a new computer as a secondary dive. I could successfully dual boot to it or access it when booted to the new drive, but a bunch of the files disappeared even though the directory structure is intact. I immediately stopped using it so as not to overwrite the data that I think is still there, just unrecognized.
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i have a drive which is making a clicking sound
the computer will not see it upon startup.
it has some valuable data that i need to recover.
can anyone help?
The clicking sound means that your main board on the drive is toast.. The only thing that can be done to get the data back is finding an identical hard drive and "swapping out the boards" if you ever have a hard drive that has what is called "sticky platter" where the drive will not spin up you can put the drive in the freezer and then master/slave it to another drive and copy away.. in most cases this will work but its important not to leave the drive in for more then say 30 minutes. And you have to work fast.
Chris
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can anyone help with this?
either swapping out a board
or using some software?
knoppix?
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can anyone help with this?
either swapping out a board
or using some software?
knoppix?
There is no software that will fix a drive that has a problem with the head servo motor. Your hard drives circuit board needs to be replaced its very simple job just undo the screws from the board and look for any ribbon cables if there are none pull the board straight up and you should be able to install the new board the same way... Remember the hard drive that you get the board from MUST BE THE SAME.. If its not the same model and make and size hard drive this will not work.
Chris
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can anyone help with this?
either swapping out a board
or using some software?
knoppix?
Ian hang tight. Lemmie talk to my friend. I do have some programs you are welcome to. I'll be in touch, Kirk
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can anyone help with this?
either swapping out a board
or using some software?
knoppix?
Ian hang tight. Lemmie talk to my friend. I do have some programs you are welcome to. I'll be in touch, Kirk
When the head servo controller chip is toast there is no software that will work.. When you can access the drive but the data is corrupt then you can use software to rebuild the partition table.
Chris
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can anyone help with this?
either swapping out a board
or using some software?
knoppix?
Ian hang tight. Lemmie talk to my friend. I do have some programs you are welcome to. I'll be in touch, Kirk
When the head servo controller chip is toast there is no software that will work.. When you can access the drive but the data is corrupt then you can use software to rebuild the partition table.
Chris
Chris-
This is not exactly true.
Data can be recovered by a variety of means, but most are extraordinary.
I have swapped out platters, controller boards, etc.
Data can be carved back with forensic software.
Simple stuff:
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/data-carving-with-photorec-to-retrieve-deleted-files-from-formatted-drives-for-forensics-and-disaster-recovery
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can anyone help with this?
either swapping out a board
or using some software?
knoppix?
Ian hang tight. Lemmie talk to my friend. I do have some programs you are welcome to. I'll be in touch, Kirk
When the head servo controller chip is toast there is no software that will work.. When you can access the drive but the data is corrupt then you can use software to rebuild the partition table.
Chris
Chris-
This is not exactly true.
Data can be recovered by a variety of means, but most are extraordinary.
I have swapped out platters, controller boards, etc.
Data can be carved back with forensic software.
Simple stuff:
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/data-carving-with-photorec-to-retrieve-deleted-files-from-formatted-drives-for-forensics-and-disaster-recovery
A hard drive that has a head servo motor controller failure like this one does "clicking" can not be recovered with software alone. I should have actually clarified my statement.
Chris
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No sweat, it was just a bit confusing.
The trick is to find an identical HD, even the version or revision number, for parts swapping, from what I've seen.
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great thread and very relevant to me.
had a WD 500gb external crash after only two weeks of ownership.... (POS!).
and what a two weeks to have it.... ALL of my Bonnaroo masters are on it (why I have not share my Broo yet).
anyway....WD was of NO help and said "they are not responsible for lost data".... fuckers......
and a data recovery business they sent me to wanted about 8 bills to get the data back...
so...... I have ordered a similar drive which should arrive tomorrow and I'll be doing the ol platter swap. (wish me luck).
I'll let yall know how it goes. Anyone have any helpful pointers on "platter swapping"?
Thanks,
Kevin
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I've had several HD's die on me during the years, sometimes the disc wouldn't spin at all, and sometimes spinning but making those clicking noises. Last time I had one die on me was a Maxtor One Touch drive that died because of overheating (my best guess anyway). A friend of mine recommended a program called Stellar Phoenix Recovery Suite and gave me his copy for loan, sure enough, I managed to salvage almost everything from the drive, with just few gigs unsalvageable out of the 300 or so that it had.
When I did that, I knew of the risks involved and that there'd be a chance that the data is forever lost if I meddled with it myself and something went wrong, yet I ended up doing it. The clicking isn't always about the chip going bad like Chris said earlier, but it could very well be signs of it doing so and that way I'd strongly recommend not using the same drive again at all. The recovery process with that program took almost one full day with next to no user input required beyond the initial selection of things to restore along with selecting where to restore them.
Also, if there's no clicking sounds but the drive is still not seen by the operating system, you can try to reactivate it from the administrative tools in Windows by going to the disc management and re-enabling the disc. It's also possible that the start sector has gone bad and that way the actual data is still there available for restoring.
Basically in the end it all boils down to whether you're prepared to take the risk of ruining the disc and the contents entirely by trying to recover it all by yourself, or if you're ready to dish out the cash to have professionals do it for you, which is nearly guaranteed success in most normal cases.
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i have a drive which is making a clicking sound
the computer will not see it upon startup.
it has some valuable data that i need to recover.
can anyone help?
The clicking sound means that your main board on the drive is toast.. The only thing that can be done to get the data back is finding an identical hard drive and "swapping out the boards" if you ever have a hard drive that has what is called "sticky platter" where the drive will not spin up you can put the drive in the freezer and then master/slave it to another drive and copy away.. in most cases this will work but its important not to leave the drive in for more then say 30 minutes. And you have to work fast.
Chris
Seriously, put it in the freezer. Wrap the drive in a zip lock bag make it air tight, put it in the freezer for a few hours, pull it out and put it in and it might boot and last long enough to get the data off of it. I've seen this work first hand.
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I really hope this works out but I'm not sure I'd be too quick to try the freezer method. When you take it out of the bag it will get covered with moisture as water condenses on the drive, etc.
I hope this thread gets everyone try and get caught up with backups.. I know it does when I see them..
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freezer trick did not work for me...
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freezer trick did not work for me...
Ummm No it would not work, because its not your platter that's not spinning up its your Servo control circuit that drives the heads... They are moving back and forth.. Hence the clicking sound.. Replace the circuit board....
Chris
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Thanks for the input guys. I'll look into these techniques when I get a chance.