Crashed hard disk ... please advise

Hi Anthony,
ZAR works perfectly if the Master Boot Record has become corrupt or if the filing system has become scrambled, which is what happened in my case. If the hard drive has physical faults then SpinRite may be able to recover lost files. If you Google SpinRite you will also get some bad reports about it's claims
As ArtyFarty so rightfully advised, sometimes you have to pay to recover lost files, especially from a hard drive which is physically damaged. I recently recovered the contents of a hard drive (not mine) which was physically damaged and just about to crash completely. In this case I could hear the drive struggling to read and write and an audible "click" was heard every now and then. The sysytem would freeze after one of these clicks and a reboot would get it up and running again. Most hard drive manufacturers supply analytical software on their web sites and with this you can determine whether the drive is worth reformatting and using again. But recover your files first. The more you try and write to a scrambled hard drive the more difficult it becomes to recover lost files in my experience.
Let me know how you get on with ZAR. There is a good (but small) forum on their web site also and the guy who writes the software appears to refund your money if the software does not recover your files!
My main experience is with Micro***** systems. Linux is much better as we all know, but unfortunately the software I need to use for work is not available for Linux.
Brian

Hi Anthony,

Sorry to hear M$ Windows crashed

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but it might not have been a Windoze fault at all! Hard drives do age with time and use you know!

Hi Anthony,

Sorry to hear M$ Windows crashed

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but it might not have been a Windoze fault at all! Hard drives do age with time and use you know!

They do indeed. And if they are about to go belly-up then it's quite likely to happen during a stressful task like defragmentation which does put a lot of strain on a disk.

Bart.

Hi Anthony,

Sorry to hear M$ Windows crashed

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but it might not have been a Windoze fault at all! Hard drives do age with time and use you know!

Seanie,

During defragmentation, the defrag utility seemed to freeze while 40% complete and at that point I pressed "Cancel" ... and my problems started thereafter.

I agree that drives to start to slowly malfunction due to age and useage but I never had any indication of a possible problem (ex. corrupted file, slow response etc).

In this case I could hear the drive struggling to read and write and an audible "click" was heard every now and then. The sysytem would freeze after one of these clicks and a reboot would get it up and running again.

Brian,

The clicking is something I encountered with my first drive crash (2004) and which was replaced with the current drive (which just crashed). With the latter, the encouraging thing is that there is no absolutely "clicking" sound. Also, I can hear the drive functioning normally during attempted reads.

But recover your files first. The more you try and write to a scrambled hard drive the more difficult it becomes to recover lost files in my experience.

The recovery is certainly my number one priority. I am not writing to it since I have removed it and I am now accessing it as an external drive via the USB 1.1 port.

Let me know how you get on with ZAR. There is a good (but small) forum on their web site also and the guy who writes the software appears to refund your money if the software does not recover your files!

The problem with ZAR is that it does not even realize there is a drive available via the USB port. I will try again just in case it was a one-time bleep.

About an hour ago I rebooted with the damaged drive already connected (via USB) and I could hear the drive working. When I want into "My Computer", it showed it properly as "Drive E:" and with 34 Gb free (which is accurate). I also got a complete directory listing including the subfolders ... which is very encouraging. When I try and copy one or more files (or folders) back to my drive C (my recovery drive), it is there that I get a message that reading is temporarily not possible. Last night I did manage to grab a few small subfolders.

I hope all of this mess somehow makes sense.

As for SpinRite, as much as many people may seem to love it, I think it has problems with crashed drives were the "volume" info is missing and in spite of the fact that the files are still there.

Any idea if a reinstall of the WinXP OS would impact my existing data files? I am not sure but I think the OS goes to specific parts of a hard disk which, technically, should mean no impact on my existing data files.

In this case I could hear the drive struggling to read and write and an audible "click" was heard every now and then. The sysytem would freeze after one of these clicks and a reboot would get it up and running again.

Brian,

The clicking is something I encountered with my first drive crash (2004) and which was replaced with the current drive (which just crashed). With the latter, the encouraging thing is that there is no absolutely "clicking" sound. Also, I can hear the drive functioning normally during attempted reads.

But recover your files first. The more you try and write to a scrambled hard drive the more difficult it becomes to recover lost files in my experience.

The recovery is certainly my number one priority. I am not writing to it since I have removed it and I am now accessing it as an external drive via the USB 1.1 port.

Let me know how you get on with ZAR. There is a good (but small) forum on their web site also and the guy who writes the software appears to refund your money if the software does not recover your files!

The problem with ZAR is that it does not even realize there is a drive available via the USB port. I will try again just in case it was a one-time bleep.

About an hour ago I rebooted with the damaged drive already connected (via USB) and I could hear the drive working. When I want into "My Computer", it showed it properly as "Drive E:" and with 34 Gb free (which is accurate). I also got a complete directory listing including the subfolders ... which is very encouraging. When I try and copy one or more files (or folders) back to my drive C (my recovery drive), it is there that I get a message that reading is temporarily not possible. Last night I did manage to grab a few small subfolders.

I hope all of this mess somehow makes sense.

As for SpinRite, as much as many people may seem to love it, I think it has problems with crashed drives were the "volume" info is missing and in spite of the fact that the files are still there.

Any idea if a reinstall of the WinXP OS would impact my existing data files? I am not sure but I think the OS goes to specific parts of a hard disk which, technically, should mean no impact on my existing data files.

It sounds to me like you need to mount the old drive internally instead of via USB. If this is a desktop machine that should not be a problem. If it's a laptop you'll have to borrow desktop off someone. Once the drive is internally mounted you should be able to use ZAR on it. Trying to work on a low-level drive problem over USB is a bad idea and probably won't work. A lot of data is not passed along the IDE-USB bridge.

As for SpinRite, since you can see the folders and mount the disk I don't think the volume info is missing.

Finally, don't re-install WinXP on to the drive. Don't write to it at all. Writing to it is the worst thing you can do as it will dramatically lower your chances of recovery.