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WSzandu
AskWoody LoungerHeck yes it is worth trying on another PC. BUT a clicking HDD is mechanical and unlikely salvageable—but not totally hopeless. One thing that is quite true: You have a limited opportunity for recovery. The limit may be zero or ten years. Every time you power the bad drive up you are taking the chance it is the last time. Every minute you run the drive may be the last minute. Make every second and attempt count by being prepared ahead of time for recovery. If you get file access MOVE fast. You did not say what the (BIOS?) tests of the HDD reported. Set up your recovery apps and test them on the other PC before plugging your bad HDD in. Have a recovery target area sufficient to copy either specific files over or copy an image of the HDD. If you choose to do an image do it uncompressed—speed is of the essence if it works. It helps if you can use a different known working data cable too. Personally if it sees the files, Windows Explorer will allow copying to another drive since you know what files you want. Grab them. Work fast. Do not shutdown or reboot for any reason if it is working. Transfer whatever you can. If it was a large amount I would have said try to do a drive image instead. Take good notes of any error messages or files that cannot be recovered messages. If an app offers to “fix” the drive for you DO NOT. The drive is suspect and it cannot be fixed by an app. But data can be corrupted by a fix. DO NOT accept any offers to format the drive. Same reason. Some recovery/repair apps are rather evil. A recovery app should recover and not write anything to a bad drive. If the apps (or the PC) do not recognize the HDD then they cannot recover anything. BTW does the BIOS report the correct size of the drive? There is one last free thing you can try: Plug in just the power cable with the data cable disconnected. Does the drive spin up? If no, it is DOA. If yes, then while the drive is spinning plug in the data cable and then see if you can access the drive. If yes, do not turn off, immediately start to copy the drive. How much is it worth to you? This is a really good service for those drives that have bit the dust and you want to get your data off without paying a black land farm to do it…of course if it isn’t the PCB board…. Basically you send them your drive info and the PCB board. They transfer the firmware to a working board and send it back to you for a $50. PCB Solutions: “If the BIOS can see the drive at all, then the PCB board does not need to be replaced.” BTW, if perchance you can see drive contents but cannot recover everything on the drive there is a forensic app (ddrescue) you can use to recover the surface sectors and then try and recover the missing files from it. But it (nor anything else) won’t work if it cannot see the drive. I can post directions.
Hi Fascist Nation Can you please post directions on ddrescue thanks
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WSzandu
AskWoody LoungerI had the same problem and went back to 3.6… a few weeks ago and have no freezing up problems since so I am staying with the old version
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WSzandu
AskWoody Loungeryes indeed it is a good free ware prog fast and efficient . not perfect , but i have used it for a long time , the other one i like is “find and run robot “
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Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent. Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems. |
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