hard drive - Damaged disk, what are my options

07
2014-07
  • Samuel Bolduc

    I think I have a damaged hard drive, with lots of PRECIOUS data on it. I always had a backup drive somewhere of it, but I needed it so I ordered more hard drives (should be here tomorrow or so) abd formated my backup one. Anyway, what could happen to my precious data in these few days, when everything went fine for so many years?

    That's exactly when my PC tower fell on its side while running. Everything was still fine the moment after, I tested some files on evey disk, OK it works, phew.

    But now I don't see the drive anymore. When I go in Disk Management, it tell me that disk 4 is not initialized and I must initialize it...

    I downloaded HD Tune to see what's up, and I have this warning in the "Health" tab : (C5) Current Pending Sector. When I click on it, in the description it says Number of unstable sectors: 1446. Then whan I do an Error scan, every single sector is detected as bad (well at least the 30~ish first ones)

    Tried to run DiskInternals NTFS Recovery. It detects the drive as a drive with no partition. When I try to scan it, it says it found 1 file (so far) and that number doesn't changed. I ran it for 40 minutes and after seeing it was still at one I thought it was probably doing nothing.

    So is this the end? I have hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work on this disk... What else can I try? Are there solutions out there? I'm willing to pay what it's worth.

    • Answers
  • KenK

    After a "hard" drive failure, I took it to a data recovery company in town. They quoted $600-$1500 to recover the data. You only pay if they can deliver. Sadly, the drive heads scraped across the platten erasing everything. But under better circumstances they assured me they'd likely have recovered all the data.


    • Related Question

    data recovery - Coffee spilled inside computer, damaged hard drive
  • Pupil

    Today coffee spilled over my table, and some of it (very less) reached the PC case placed under the table. I think little bit of it got inside the PC case through the front. As that happened the fan started running very fast and made noise. I tried to restart to see if it becomes fine, but the computer didn't start again. First it gave an error of "Alert! Air temperature sensor not detected" and didn't start. Next I tried again multiple times of starting the computer but then it gave some memory error. I was not able to start the computer.

    Incase there's a problem in hard disk or something related to memory, is there any way we can extract our work or data? I am scared if I am not able to extract my work in case some problem occurs like that. What options would I have? Help!!

    alt text

    EDIT: I have attached the photo here and you can see the area spilt in red circle. The hard drive electronics have been affected and internal speaker may also have been affected. Any advise on cleaning and if hard drive can work?

    EDIT 2: Are there any professional services offered to extract data from blemished hard disk, like this one, in case I am not able to run it personally?


    • Related Answers
  • Jeff Atwood

    Based on the picture in the update, it looks like the hard drive is fried.

    You can try data recovery services, but they are in the "if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it" category. It does look like this hard drive might work if you swapped logic boards with another drive of the exact same model, however, since the logic board is what was damaged. Still, don't hold your breath -- even basic data recovery is crazy expensive, so brace yourself.

    I hope you had backups, either online or offline...

  • Guillermo Siliceo Trueba

    I'm sure your data is fine, those hard disk are air tight sealed, just extract it and wait for the coffee to dry up, or use a vaccum cleaner in reverse to dry it. The CPU might have got fried but you need to wait until the coffee dries up to know for sure. In any case DO NOT turn your computer on, wait a few days and try again.

  • Posipiet

    As always with data recovery: Check your backup. You do have backup, right? If not, put a price tag on your data. If this is 4-digit, head to a professional immediately. This aside, more info:

    While the PCB board itself is protected by a coating, the contacts and soldering are not.

    Coffee is acidic, and if the liquid or residue remain on the PCB, permanent damage is probable. If the through are open, the coffee is drawn in by capillary action and you will not be able to fully remove it.

    Coffee is conductive, and there may or may not be permanent damage done by short circuits.

    You can carefully remove the PCB to clean it with distilled water. Do not use tap water! Tap water can leave a conductive residue. Reattach after fully dry.

    You can try to replace the PCB, if you find a similar disk of similar firmware. The firmware of the disk is partially saved on the disk, therefore the firmwares must match. I have had no luck with a seemingly similar disk when I tried this, because of firmware mismatch. (In the old days, the firmware resided on the PCB only, and switching PCB usually worked)

    The data is very probably fine. I am pretty sure a professional will be able to restore the data anyway.

    If you manage to get the drive going again, I advise to move the data to a different drive immediately. A failed drive cannot be trusted.

  • quickly_now

    Soak the coffee (on the HDD) up with a paper tissue or similar. Clean carefully and gently with another paper tissue dipped in a little water. Then try starting it up. You may get lucky.

  • sikas

    You can see another old hard drive same as yours (manufacture, size, etc...) and change the hard drive board. I have done this many times.

    I had some old hard drives that had important data, and suddenly, the hard drive board stopped working, so I changed it with another one from a hard drive I found similar to the corrupted one, and it worked.

    So my advice is to change the board and pray that the media isn`t corrupted.