Subject: [CTC] Recovering access to a hard drive Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 13:14:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Stephen Ronan To: americaconnects@ctcnet.org The material below is taken from an exchange on the email list for folks who provide technology-related assistance to nonprofits. It's reposted with Gavin Clabaugh's permission. The oldest message is first, so that you can read right down this message from top to bottom. - Steve Ronan > > > One of my customers had the unfortunate experience of losing > > > access to a hard drive with vital data. The drive will not boot > > > up and they have no backups of the data on the drive -- they just > > > weren't doing the backups. We are now facing the task of trying > > > to recover the data, which is very important to them. Has anyone > > > faced this recently? Advice on recovery? And finally, any > > > decent data revovery outfits in the Boston area? > > > > > > Thanks in advance, > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Gavin Clabaugh [mailto:gclabaugh@mott.org] > > Sent: Monday, June 18, 2001 9:52 AM > > To: riders@topica.com > > Subject: Re: [Riders] data loss > > > > ... > > > > Before I'd turn to a data recovery place, I'd make sure that > > there is not another way to get the data off the disk. If you > > must, however, the ONLY place I'd send a drive is to OnTrack. I > > have used them in the past and they know what they are doing. > > And, while it is not cheap, you have to compare the costs to > > recover vs. the costs to recreate. > > > > That said, it SOUNDS like you have other options. It the problem > > is that the drive simply won't boot, then I'd use another boot > > device, and then get to the data. once the drive is mounted. > > > > 1] Try booting with a floppy disk. If you can, and the data is > > FAT or FAT32, you can then copy it to another media.. Eg, boot > > with floppy, load network drives, copy all data from bad drive to > > network drive. Face Redmond and genuflect. > > > > OR > > > > 2] Try connecting the drive into another system as a > > secondary/slave drive. This is what I usually do. Even if the > > drive won't boot (bad boot sector?), you can still read/write > > from the drive when it is attached to another machine. > > > > regards > > > > gavin > > > > > > > Thanks Galvin, > > I actually tried both approaches already with no success. The > drive is simply not recognized as a slave (correct jumper > settings, BIOS configuration, etc.) or floppy boot approach, so > I'm assuming that it is an actual bad drive. Any additional > suggestions are welcomed. > > thanks again > Humm. If you power up the drive, can you hear it spin up? If you can, it might be a problem with "stiction" (like friction, but with sticky on the front). This happens when the auto-park mechanism gets stuck in park.. basically the heads are moved over to the side of the drive and then they won't "unpark" -- at least it used to. I haven't looked inside a hard drive in a couple of years... I suppose I should again. But I digress. You are going to think me nuts, but there are a couple of approaches (not for the weak of heart) that sometimes work: 1] Put the drive in the freezer for a while. (this chills all the parts and the metal contracts). Sometimes it works (2 out of 10 times) 2] Turn the drive sideways, on edge. (sometimes the addition of gravity will unstick the heads) Try different orientations. 3] Wap it on the side right when the drive is spinning up, and just before you hear it go 'tick, tick, sigh".. That's when the heads are doing a seek across the platters). This can screw up everything or can be just enough to make things work. This reminds me of my first experience with "how things work." Many Many years ago, I worked in underground radio. Back then, the common practice at the radio station when things didn't work was: > Kick it twice, wait 10 minutes and kick it again. You'd be surprised how often that worked. Then again, take this and all my advice with a grain of salt. I have also been know to take old keyboards and hang them in the shower to clean them. Yep, just let the water run over them for a good 20 minutes, dry throughly, and voila, a nice clean keyboard. (Its the DRY THROUGHLY part that is most important). I have found that this will even remove the magic muck combination made of cigarette ashes, nicotine/smoke, and coffee (with cream and sugar). (for those interested, cigarette smoke actually deposits a conductive material on circuit boards). regards Gavin ------------------------------------------------ * America Connects Consortium national CTC discussion list * * To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@ctcnet.org with * the message: unsubscribe americaconnects youremailaddresshere * * Any questions? Please write CTCNet staff at info@ctcnet.org. * * Archives: http://www.ctcnet.org/americaconnects/