Reading from a damaged hard drive - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2020, 04:30:52 pm
content: My son's computer has a second disk (an actual hard disk drive) for storing large data; mostly game software and raw footage from his video production experiments. Given the nature and size of the data, there is no backup for this drive.Which, of course, now turns into a problem. The drive has failed, and it turns out that my son has stored photos on the drive too, which he would prefer not to lose.The drive shows a rather annoying behaviour: On certain read (?) operations, it just gets stuck, apparently retrying forever. You can hear the same head positioning pattern quietly repeating, and the PC waits forever when trying to read data during an attempt to copy them. Windows' attempted automatic drive repair (which was forced on us upon booting a couple of times, when we were not quick enough to intervene) also gets stuck for a looong time at certain points, but eventually gives up and moves on.I have searched the internet for software which attempts to recover files from damaged drives, and can handle these read errors gracefully (via a non-eternal timeout). Tried a few recommended freeware solutions, but none of them does what I need. They all seem geared towards retrieving files that were accidentally deleted, or lost due tologicalerrors in the file system. But no luck dealing with what seems to be aphysicalproblem on the disk, with read errors from the drive. (Or the drive itself trying and retrying over and over again.)Can anyone recommend a software for this? I would be willing to spend a bit of money if no freeware solution is available. But I don't think the data justify paying for the time of a data recovery service. Thank you!

author: DrG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2020, 04:46:39 pm
content: Have you tried looking into the so-called "forensic" tools, rather than the so-called "recovery" tools? e.g.,https://www.guru99.com/computer-forensics-tools.htmlNot sure this will help, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2020, 05:07:51 pm
content: don't risk to loose your data beyond the recover point.safe your drive and take it to someone with the properhardware tools to retrieve your data to a healthy one.The expense in doing so is less (much less) than buyingthe hardware tools to do this job.It is very safe and results are very good..unless you damage things too much while trying just softlyPaul

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2020, 06:16:32 pm
content: Thank you both! Yes, I guess I am at the point where I'll ask for a quote from one or two professional data recovery services. (And may still decide to decline, if they are as expensive as I'm afraid they will be.)I did try a few things, hoping that I would not do more damage than what Windows' unwanted auto-repair may or may not have contributed before. But no joy: The eternal retries seem to come from the HDD firmware itself, and I have not found any data recovery software which could handle them gracefully.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2020, 11:25:47 pm
content: Linux is quite verbose about I/O errors and software-initiated retries, so you could see if it really is the hardware that locks up forever.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2020, 11:44:39 pm
content: You will need another drive of similar or larger size.First step - get an image of the readable sectors of the bad drive onto the good one. You'll probably need to use specialized tools for this. There's probably something for Windows, but I would useddrescue. You can follow a guide like this one to boot a Linux LiveCD to accomplish it:https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/21876/rescue-old-damaged-cds-with-an-ubuntu-live-cd/.This will skip blocks that are unreadable and continue relatively quickly, which will get you past the OS endlessly retrying and not getting anywhere, and extract the readable sectors onto a safe and working drive and off the one that may fail at any moment. Hopefully you can then write this image back to a working drive, or mount it directly, to recover what files it's possible to recover. If you're lucky, the damaged areas might only hit video data, and the majority may be mostly recoverable with some corrupted sections. Depends how bad the damage is. If the filesystem metadata is really messed up, you could try something like PhotoRec, but this is usually only useful for small files, since it can only handle contiguously allocated blocks, and large files usually end up fragmented.ddrescue is about as good as you can do from the software side, if it's unable to recover a usable image because the firmware is locking up or similar, you'll probably have to resort to hardware techniques. *Usually*, at least in my limited experience, it's the OS that gets hung up on these sectors and not the firmware, though.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2020, 09:28:05 am
content: Thank you again, especially for the pointer to ddrescue. I had considered Linux software as an option, hoping that solutions a bit "closer to the metal" might be available there -- but had not come across ddrescue. I will definitely give it a try now!

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2020, 10:15:32 am
content: i learnt the hard lesson when i was like 20 years old. i lost my "1st generation data" in its entirety when i dropped the HDD. here i am with my "2nd generation data", the rules are simple:1) handle storage data like a silicon igot (dont drop it or subject to vibration)2) change HDD within 5-10 years or if you start to hear weird sound from it3) 2nd HDD backup on your 1st priority files (the files that only you in this world have it)ps: i googled and implemented the "recovery from clicking HDD" to no success on few of my damaged HDD. and clicking sound is not on the "FW" or "OS" layer, its on real physical layer inside your HDD thats no SW can reach. good luck.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2020, 04:53:02 pm
content: Good luck with your recovery... I've also learned the hard way after several dead hard drives, to reiterate the previous post... Backup data to at least 2 hard drives on a regular basis, keep in separate physical locations. Buy a new drive every 5 years, copy everything over so you have yet another backup, they are so cheap these days. You can even set up a NAS and backup to that, like your own personal cloud. Don't trust optical media... made that mistake, most CD/DVD have disc-rotted, luckily nothing important lost. Same goes for SSD... I've had one die after less than 1 year, and when they die they die instantly (hard drives might give you some warnings but don't count on that either).I would backup DATA ONLY, not really worthwhile mirroring an entire disk unless you have to restore the exact same image. If I have a major failure I would just reinstall the OS and software from scratch anyways. All I care about is my home/user directories. That keeps backup size much smaller and easier to manage.I concur that a professional recovery service is the safer way to go, at least after clobbering the drive with ddrescue a bit (although the more you run it the greater the chance it may cause further damage). I've had a drive fail at the controller level and luckily had an identical drive that I was able to simply swap boards on temporarily. However, if there is disc damage it may need a clean room to open up the drive, look at heads, etc. Hopefully it won't come to that. Sometimes they just have better software tools that can sit there and read the drive at a much lower level to hopefully reconstruct the data. Don't be surprised if you will get a bunch of corrupt files back but at least the rest can be recovered. Good luck.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2020, 06:27:11 pm
content: Thanks, edy and Mechatrommer. I couldn't agree more regarding the need for backups and your recommended approaches. Looking at the bright side: My son has learnt that lesson too now (I hope).

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2020, 01:33:30 am
content: another cheap backup source is DVDR for like pictures, videos etc. if you dont trust reliability of them, keep backupping the same data every 1-2 years until you have multiple backup. but it could be nightmare to maintain. i've also made a file log program to list all my data, so i can know whats deleted and added during a period. and the list can be used to reconstruct my data later in case for another disaster. 1st priority data can be retrieved from backups, 2nd priority data can be re-downloaded from the net hopefully. i'm not sure if i can trust the "cloud" yet as a backup source, not really have enough knowledge on it. fwiw..

author: MIS42N
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2020, 08:00:39 am
content: A friend had similar problems a few years back, and I burned a CD with a standalone Linux and rescue packages. I had a look through my disks and couldn't find it, I think I gave it to someone else. So I can't say exactly what it was, but I found it by searching and this solution turned up as a complete solution as a CD (or maybe DVD) bootable image. It started with ddrescue but once the disk is cloned there were other tools to scan the copy and extract files. There were corrupt video files and one of the tools was able to copy these and make good files with a couple of missing frames. One or two files were lost but the friend was happy get back most of it.Sorry I can't remember where I got it from, but hopefully you'll come across it. It is definitely not a good idea to fiddle with the original disk more than necessary, just take the copy and work on that.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2020, 10:29:56 am
content: Quote from: MIS42N on December 31, 2020, 08:00:39 amThis one maybe?https://www.system-rescue.org/Thanks for the pointer; this looks like a very convenient starting point. "Minimally invasive" with a bootable USB stick that already brings the right tools. I will give that a try!

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2020, 01:02:17 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on December 31, 2020, 01:33:30 amEncrypt your data locally to solve the security problem and upload to multiple cloud services. For small amounts of data, there are quite a few free services out there. And you can also have more backups on your own devices or paid cloud services as well.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2020, 02:06:15 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on December 31, 2020, 01:02:17 pmi am not talking about data security, consider that settled (even though encrypting 1TB of data will take extra minutes or hours of backup work). i am talking about reliability (similar to endurance in HDD/SSD term) how long the cloud will be there? 10? 20 years? paid service is another issue, how much cost per month with 1TB of backup? can it beat local HDD backup service at $100/5years rate? and then, there's internet throughput to send those 1TB data, that another hours of waiting time during backup process. since i think i'm more comfortable to backup locally, i wont bother searching for those infos, no? am i 10 years old behind?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2020, 11:24:37 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on December 31, 2020, 02:06:15 pmEncFS does it automatically in the background, no need to prepare encrypted archives before uploading.https://github.com/vgough/encfsQuoteThe odds of multiple cloud services going down at the same time are very low. It also would be an extra backup on top of what you already have, so now it's multiple cloud services going down at the same time all your local copies are destroyed, which would be even less likely. You can run the backups at night so they don't slow down your network, but using QoS also solves that and lets you run the backups 24/7 if needed.If you have access to a VPS, you can upload to that and then remote in and upload from the VPS to the cloud storage services, which probably has much more upload bandwidth then your home Internet service.In the end, an extra backup is rarely a bad thing and the free cloud storage services are good for that. Just don't use that as your only backup even though using multiple services probably already gives enough redundancy.

author: MIS42N
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2021, 12:34:50 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on December 31, 2020, 02:06:15 pmI am definitely 10 years behind. I built what is now called a NAS in 2009, an Atom motherboard (no fan) and originally 2 * 240Gb disks, now 2 * 1Tb and about to be 2 * 2Tb. These are run as software RAID 1 (identical copies). This runs 24/7 on top of a wardrobe and managed remotely. It pulls about 25W so costs a few cents a day to run. Normally I use it as the working drive for most things I'm doing, the exceptions are disk intensive things like video editing. I consider it as being backup. Anything I really don't want to lose (mainly photos) is copied to DVD (2 copies), one copy in the garage (concrete block not attached to the house) but also remains on the server. I only use cloud services to share stuff with other people.The 'NAS' also runs a web server (so I could share files that way, but why not let someone else take the network hit if they offer it for free) and a mail server. Most mail uses IMAP, with a copy on the client and a copy on the server. I have 2 regular clients, desktop and laptop, so there are three copies of mail.I trust my own arrangement more than any cloud based service - not dependent on the Internet working, no uncertainty about security, very responsive compared to the Internet (gigabit ethernet), minimal cost (I haven't worked out the cost of electricity for a year compared to paying for a Terabyte of cloud so I don't know if it is cheaper).The only trouble I have had was a suspect failed disk. I bought a replacement but it also 'failed'. It turned out to be a power supply problem (it uses a switch mode 12V supply, not a regular PC supply), there was enough grunt to power up one disk but starting a second dragged the supply to 10V. I was able to let the system run with one disk until a new power supply arrived. If all else failed I could build another server on an old clunker (maybe even a Raspberry Pi) and mount one of the disks but that was unnecessary.Happy to live 10 years behind. Except for the disks - the new ones are designed for NAS usage, longer time between failures and low power. Reliability and low power are more important than performance.