Extract data from dead HDD

[sj33]

My laptop HDD gave up the ghost yesterday. Initially I wasn't so worried because it gave me an excuse to upgrade from my old 320GB 5400rpm drive to a 750GB 7200rpm 16MB cache drive... but I've realised that I've now lost my save games, including a completed Mass Effect 2 save, 80 hours on The Last Remnant and more. I've connected the old drive via a USB caddy, and the partition isn't even detected, and you can hear the drive struggling. Are there any applications that can extract the data from this drive?

[smouty]

I can recommend Spinrite. Bit of a pain as it is DOS based so a bootable USB stick or CD is needed and you might have to connect it back up to a PC/Laptop but it will get a drive working 99% of the time. You can also try the ziplok bag/freezer trick if there are only a few small files needed.

http://www.grc.com/sr/testimonials.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

[H-Man]

At work we use http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

It's pretty straight forward and flexible - you can use it while the disk is attached by usb caddy. I've recovered more than a few disks in this way, even ones with completely fubared file systems.

[speedlolita]

You could also swap the platters inside the HDD with that of an identicle drive. More expensive option but if it's your drive arm that's screwed you'll have a fully working drive again.

[smouty]

^^^ What are the chances of that actually working?


Testdisk is good but the disk/USB stick/SD Card must be readable even if it appears blank. This is usually viable when the allocation table is corrupt.

[speedlolita]

I dunno, 100% if the drive is identicle.

[smouty]

If you are not au fait with current HDD tech this is a nice analogy.

If you scale a hard drive to the size of a 747, it's like flying the 747 1/100 of an inch off the ground at 2,500,000 miles per hours, with the pilot able to read the spots on a set of dominos.
And that was in 2006.

A single bit of dust is enough the totally wreck a HDD.

[sj33]

Thanks guys, I tried the above applications as well as a couple of others, Active@Undelete did the job eventually! Recovered my files fine

[Lyris]

Swapping the platters out would likely require a clean-room and you'd also have to be skilled enough to remove the heads without scraping them on anything valuable!

[briareos_kerensky]

You could also swap the platters inside the HDD with that of an identicle drive. More expensive option but if it's your drive arm that's screwed you'll have a fully working drive again.

You're probably mixing up platters with electronics. Electronics can be swapped if the discs are of the same model and within a certain production period. Replacing/swapping electronics is mechanically simple but can be difficult to find the correct board, so if a software doesn't do the job and the data is important, it's better to look at professional data-recovery companies.

[abigsmurf]

forensic hdd recovery = $$$