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Author Topic: Drive Recovery Help  (Read 1330 times)

Ben

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Drive Recovery Help
« on: March 24, 2010, 01:56:51 PM »
Hey chums, I'm trying to recover a coworkers jacked up external hard drive (Seagate Freeagent) that I have been unable to read. CHKDSK declares it a RAW drive. I've tried converting to NTFS with CHKDSK, but no go. I'm currently running Testdisk on the drive, but as it's a 1gig, it's taking forever to analyze it.

While I'm waiting, does anyone have ideas for other fixes that might convert this back to a Win readable format, or any Linux prgs that would get me to see data to pull it off. I will probably also try a copy of Stellar Phoenix that I have, but if there's something easier / quicker, that's what I'm looking for.

Thanks in advance.
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AZRedhawk44

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Re: Drive Recovery Help
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2010, 02:00:09 PM »
Image it before you do anything else.

You might be able to do some dastardly things with the linux "dd" command.  Dumping data to a particular sector of the drive to re-mark the partitions and file system formats, while leaving the rest of the data intact.  I dunno.  Hairy stuff.

The fact you've attempted a conversion already from RAW to NTFS is kinda scary.  Hence the suggestion to image it before trying anything more.

Easier/quicker when it comes to techie data recovery?  Not to my knowledge.  Nothing easy/quick about recovering a crashed drive.
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Ben

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Re: Drive Recovery Help
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2010, 02:56:41 PM »
Well the convert wouldn't even run, so I'm pretty sure it didn't do anything. Testdrive gave me the same 'no partition found" error. I'll try dd and see if  Ican pull anything off, else i'll goto Phoenix and let that take its two freakin' days to run to see if it can get anything.

Further research indicates NTFS going to RAW is fairly common after a power surge, which is what this guy had. Rather irritating since I supply high dollar UPS and surge protectors to our telecommuters, but I'm pretty sure they're plugging their big screen TVs into them instead of their .gov issued equipment. Your tax dollars efficiently at work.  ;/
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Harold Tuttle

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Re: Drive Recovery Help
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2010, 03:04:59 PM »
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tyme

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Re: Drive Recovery Help
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2010, 01:42:29 PM »
ddrescue.
gpart.  (not gparted).

I assume a freeagent is one of those usb-only abominations?  Take the disk out, use one of these (not sure who really makes them, but thermaltake and vantec both sell branded versions of the same basic hardware):

1 drive: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3829117&CatId=2785
2 drive: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5352947&CatId=2785

(Direct SATA/eSATA access might make attempts to image the drive less dodgy than it would be over USB.)
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sanglant

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Re: Drive Recovery Help
« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2010, 05:19:35 PM »
Quote from: Ben on March 24, 2010, 02:56:41 PM
Well the convert wouldn't even run, so I'm pretty sure it didn't do anything. Testdrive gave me the same 'no partition found" error. I'll try dd and see if  Ican pull anything off, else i'll goto Phoenix and let that take its two freakin' days to run to see if it can get anything.

Further research indicates NTFS going to RAW is fairly common after a power surge, which is what this guy had. Rather irritating since I supply high dollar UPS and surge protectors to our telecommuters, but I'm pretty sure they're plugging their big screen TVs into them instead of their .gov issued equipment. Your tax dollars efficiently at work.  ;/
you know going with a different plug something like

by having the us plug into the wall and the oddball into the surge protector. =D

edit: don't know how, but i missed a sentence. [tinfoil] point was the surge protector would be useless for there tv. [popcorn]
« Last Edit: March 25, 2010, 10:53:08 PM by sanglant »
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Ben

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Re: Drive Recovery Help
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2010, 07:59:00 PM »
Quote from: tyme on March 25, 2010, 01:42:29 PM
ddrescue.
gpart.  (not gparted).

I assume a freeagent is one of those usb-only abominations?  Take the disk out, use one of these (not sure who

It is USB. Taking the case apart (doesn't look like it was made for it so there will be no going back) and sticking the drive in another interface was actually going to come next. It's a fairly old drive, so I don't know that it's esata. In any case, I'm still waiting for Phoenix to finish scanning, which looks like it will be at least another day. So far it hasn't even come up with file fragments, so it's looking doubtful. I'll still try dd after this, though Linux was also not finding the drive the first time I tried. Phoenix found both the logical and the partition, it's just not seeing any data yet.

I'm going to give up in another attempt or two. This is the second time I've had to go through this with this bonehead, because he refuses to follow backup policy. Last time I had to send his busted drive into a recovery shop. This time he's going to have to face the consequences for his actions.
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Paddy2010

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Re: Drive Recovery Help
« Reply #7 on: March 27, 2010, 02:00:41 AM »
If you (somehow) manage to get (something) back, next time use this (on a redundant backup): http://www.storagecraft.com/shadow_protect_desktop.php
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sanglant

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Re: Drive Recovery Help
« Reply #8 on: March 27, 2010, 10:33:10 AM »
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