From my previous post you heard about my disappointment of Hitachi hard disk drives. Now I would like to discuss what you may do to try and recover the data from the crapped out drive. This process can work for a specific kind of hard drive failure where the failure is in disk controller card that is sandwiched onto the bottom of the drive.
First you should listen carefully to the computer when it starts. You want to make sure that you can't hear a clicking sound coming from the area of the hard drive. Clicking from the hard drive usually indicates a head crash. Now I have to tell you what a head crash is. A head crash occurs when the read/write head actually contacts the recording surface of the spinning disk. Normally a disk drive spins between 4200 and 10,000 RPMs. This speed allows the head to float across the surface without contacting the oxide magnetic coating. When the head crashes, it scrapes away the oxide FOREVER removing the 1's and 0's that make up the stored data. This is analogous to scraping a audio cassette tape with a razor blade. See HowStuffWorks for this comparison. A clever hacker could still simulate the sound of a head crash with a rootkit virus but this is beyond the scope of my post. In any account you should remove the drive right away and send it off to a company that specializes in hard disk drive data recovery. One of the best is a company in California called Data Savers.
If your computer actually starts up, but winks out after a few seconds or minutes you may have the relatively rare condition where the controller card is bad or going bad. This little tutorial pertains to this scenario.
Let me start by pointing out that I am not an Electronic Engineer, so some of my guesses regarding the electronics may not be accurate.
My guess is that this winking out is caused by a chip that functions properly when it is at a lower temperature then fails when it reaches "normal" operating temperature. This guess is based on my experience back in the day when I was a main frame computer operator. I would watch a FE, Field Engineer, take a can of "trike" and chill different chips on a suspect circuit board. It was an expensive method of diagnostics in planetary ozone cost, but it worked.
So what if you could chill all the chips on a "bad" circuit board? You would be able to get the board to function so long as you don't let it warm to "normal" operating temperature.
Liquid ice presents the problem of melting and getting into the drive and shorting it out. In fact even too much moisture may be problematic. I have been successful in the past by freezing a hard drive in the freezer overnight in a zipper storage bag with a desiccant pouch to absorb any moisture. The next day I would plug it in to the computer and copy the files over to another drive. Time is the enemy with the freezer method, because as you get up to "normal" operating temperature is winks out again.
I decided to eliminate the liquid and the time issue with this attempt, so I used dry ice. I was very surprised that the amount that I needed cost less than $5. I used a Styrofoam cooler and ran my cables around the top and pushed the lid as tight as possible. I left the dry ice in the grocery plastic bag, so I wouldn't have to touch it.
I plugged the USB into the computer and FAIL! I expected as much, clicking. I promised the man that I would try and recover the data regardless. What I had planned to do was use a partitioning tools like GParted (My Favorite = Free) or Partition Magic for those who need more features and need their money less than I. The plan is to copy all the partitions to a new drive and then install it into the once broken, in this case, laptop.
My computer offers me an option, F12, at boot to select a boot device other than the default, first hard drive. Check with your brand or modify the option in the boot tab in the BIOS to boot from USB Hdd. Save settings and exit.
GParted comes in a Live CD format so you can use it to format your new hard drive without even having Windows installed on the computer. If you took advantage of the recent back-to-school sales where 8GB SanDisk Cruzers went for around $20, then you are all set up for using the USB version of GParted, Parted Magic or System Rescue CD. You will need to have the bad drive mounted through the USB port via the adapter and in the case of the laptop here the new unformatted drive installed in the laptop. When Gparted starts you will see the USB key that you are running the software from, the "bad" drive and the unformatted drive. You will need to format the unformatted drive in partitions at least as big as the original ones. In my case I replaced the 160GB drive with a 250GB drive for a difference in price of $8. It is as simple as scheduling the partition and formats (NTFS for most modern Windows computers) of the new partitions and clicking the green check to apply.
Once you have prepped the new drive with the proper partitions and NTFS formats, you can select each partition and select Partition - Copy in the drop down. You should copy each partition in order as they appear on the old disk to the partitions on the new disk.
Exit everything and shutdown the computer and remove all the USB devices. If you did this correctly the new drive will boot right up just like the old one. Now you see why I chose the hard way. The so-called easy way of just backing up the files means that you still have to reinstall Windows and all the programs and copy back all the files. Then after that it takes literally months to get all the little tweaks back the way you wanted them.
The moral of the story BACK THE FUCK UP! Use a free open source image tool called Clonezilla when you first get the computer and even after every major upgrade. A great new expensive install of Pro Tools or Photoshop CS4? BACK THE FUCK UP!!! Save all your important shit outside the computer on a USB hard drive like the Western Digital My Book. They are available for Mac and PC with all the interfaces, USB 1.0/2.0, Firewire, Firewire 800, and eSATA. If your computer does eSATA or Firewire 800, choose either of them. Those options rank 1 and 2 in terms of speed respectively. Remember, this isn't the same as creating a Restore Point! A Restore Point assumes that the hard drive is going to be good the next time you restore to a previous point in time. You Apple fanboys are NOT immune to this either. I have heard horror stories about Apple's Time Machine. Online backups are impractical for whole system "clone" image backup for two reasons, huge hard drive capacities and relatively slow download speed compared to USB/Firewire/eSATA. Disaster backups need to be held in an offsite place in a manner that will keep them safe from any weather/disaster related event.
Think of the computer as the filing cabinet. The filing cabinet isn't that expensive to replace, but the files in that cabinet are priceless. If you keep a copy off site, you can be back up and running in a few hours.
Your Average Idiot
Sometimes the bits and bytes bite you in the ass
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