bad hard drive

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kmkrreeves1

Member
Someone brought me their laptop that wouldn't boot, I just assumed it was some weird windows bug, it said OS not found... but it turned out the computer wasn't seeing its hard drive. I put the drive in my desktop, and after about 5 minutes it finally showed up in device manager, the another 5 minutes, it started showing the disks in my computer. When trying to access the drive sometimes it says parameter incorrect, and sometimes it says data error (cyclic redundancy check). then it says the drive isn't formatted and I need to format before I can use it. In disk management it shows them as RAW file systems.

I tried to do a windows check disk on it, and after 72 hours it had gotten through the first 5000 out of 437000 blocks in the first stage (never made it to 1%)

most programs I tried freaked out when I tried to do anything with it, but Ease US Data recovery wizard (after about 12 hours of scanning) will show everything on it, but will only give me 2gb for free ($70 for anymore than that)

It is also really quiet... it is spinning consistently, but it makes a rhythmic activity noise (it doesn't sound as metallic as it does in the recording) it just sounds like a normal drive, but in short burst and rhythmic.
noise

Does anyone have an idea of whats wrong with it, I listened to a bunch of sounds on this site http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php but none of them were similar to this one.

the drive is a 320gb toshiba mk3265GSX

I talked them into buying a $50 120gb SSD and I already reinstalled windows and everything, just need to get their stuff off that drive...
 
Getting their stuff off a bad drive is gonna be a PITA. If the stuff is really important you can get a professional to recover the data. But it will cost $$$. I've used HDD Regenerator in the past and it allowed me to at least get access to about 90% of my data. You may need to do multiple passes. http://www.dposoft.net/hdd.html

This is why it's critical to do back ups periodically.
 
Thanks for the replies... but the drive is done now... I was doing another scan with that ease US and was gonna consider asking them what they wanted with that 2gb (I really don't know how much stuff they need on it, and they probably don't either...) but during the scan (I was away when it happened) The drive started violently clicking, and making a dead screechy siren noise... windows doesn't recognize it anymore...
another recording- fun noise...

SO now I'm getting quotes on data recovery, as far as I can tell there is nowhere within 5 hours of me that does data recovery (There is one that might, but they haven't answered my e-mail and I just went to their website and was greeted with an internal server error, and I don't know if they will actually do it anyway)

Does anyone have any suggestion, I've asked for a few quotes already... A sketchy company that said it was in my city but is actually on the other side of the country quoted me $599... which isn't that bad, but I don't like what I've seen so far... (ADRdatarecovery.com)
 
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Yeah, that's one dead drive and that program I mentioud wouldn't work on that now. I would not mess it with further if you are going to send it in for recovery. I'm not sure what a good service is, I'll have to do some research, but I think the good ones will have you ship the drive to them. Don't limit yourself to what's in town or near by.
 
Usually if it's grinding beforehand, I stick it in the freezer while trying to recover data. Doesn't always work though. But it sounds like your drive is toast now.
 
yeah once it started all that I knew there was nothing else I can do with it... I did look up that freezer method, and it only has a chance of working with a stuck spindle, and there a bigger chance of causing more damage with condensation and stuff...

I contacted that one local business on facebook and they said they would be basically be happy to send it to drivesavers for me (and I'm sure tack on an extra $100) So I'll just wait for some estimates to come in and see what the owner wants to do...

it's really ironic too, I know the owner, and they insure EVERYTHING (except the laptop with all their files on it and no backup) ipods, cameras, turtles, dogs...
 
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